


“as if we were fools by heavenly compulsion”

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:04:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 30,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4297023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short fics running through permutations of the soulmate-mark trope for this pairing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Impression

**First Impression**

Avon knew that a man like Blake would be planning something––and he knew that his only real hope for survival lay in whatever it was. Besides, he felt a queer desire to impress someone who was already, so easily, seemingly in charge of this group of malcontents.

Blake asked Vila how the door worked, and Vila didn't know.

Fortunately, Avon did.

"It's simple enough. All authorised personnel have their palm prints filed in the computer. The blue sensor plate reads the print. If it conforms, the computer opens the door."

Blake raised an eyebrow at him, but something glinted in his eyes.

"Neat."

Avon started to worry. There was one word on his wrist: clipped and professional, an affirmation, that whatever he'd said or done was proficient and good. Avon had tried to be right for it, in his way. But it was one word, and that––could happen to anyone. It hadn't, often, but it might. "Most computer-based functions are," Avon said, not knowing whether he hoped it had been just an accident.

"No, that isn’t what I meant––though it's a fair point," Blake said with a small smile. "What I meant was, I've always wondered what these were instructions to." He adjusted his sleeve and Avon winced, slightly, at the length of the first words he'd said to Blake. At the too-evident, too-invested desire to demonstrate that he was too important for Blake to get on without. Not one for the record books, but neither was it unembarrassing.

"I thought they might relate to engineering. Next door, I suppose. So that's settled, then," Blake said casually, sitting and taking Avon's hand as though it was easy, evidently planning to just talk through the rest of his proposed scheme like this. Avon didn't quite think to pull away, though they hadn’t even been introduced. Blake didn’t even know his _name._

Vila did the honors. "Blake––Kerr Avon." He immediately fouled it up by informing Blake that Avon was the _second_ best computer technician in the Federated Worlds, and Avon resolved to keep Vila around long enough to make him pay for that.


	2. Linked In Some Way

**Linked In Some Way**

Part of the problem was figuring out what kind you had. Were you exactly matched? Complemented? Your mark could also take the form of an equation, a metaphor or a puzzle. Sometimes what the mark meant only became obvious as your life unfolded. Sometimes it never did.

Avon suspected his was a puzzle, some sort of visual joke––though he'd not come across an obvious solution, and he couldn't say for certain.

Twelve dots in a ring. 

He and Blake didn't fit together, in any way. He couldn't make Blake's mark––a simple number, written by someone clearly in need of practice––match with his own. In his mind he tried a thousand tricks to beguile their marks into compatibility, hating the compulsion that drove him to try endlessly to force a square peg into a round hole. He _wracked_ himself over it. He didn't want to be anyone's but Blake's. He didn't want Blake to be anyone's but his.

And everyone met their match, sooner or later. If Blake wasn't his, Avon would like to know who the hell was. He didn't know what he'd do, when someone with, perhaps, a mark identical to Blake's came along. He didn't pursue Blake, because of what it would do to him to lose Blake when whoever it was at last made an appearance. Then, after the Andromedan war, he lost Blake anyway, and realized he'd been a fool not to take everything he could get. There was no point looking for any safety, in trying for any emotional preservation––safety was impossible in the face of Blake. He spent two years searching for him.

When his third shot hit Blake, something flickered in Blake's gaze. He grabbed Avon, looking down at where his arm touched Avon’s, before he slumped to the ground. Troopers flooded into the room, coming around Avon in––a ring. Avon counted, suddenly suspecting it. Yes. Twelve of them.

He looked down at Blake. At the exposed numeral '3' on his arm, written in a shaking, wild hand. If Avon tried to write now, it'd look like that. It is the only thing he would be able to write.

He'd always thought their deaths would be connected. He hadn't understood that it was because _that_ was where they were tied.

Avon started to laugh, mad and triumphant, and didn't stop until the electric energy of twelve shots writhed through his chest, cutting off his ability to breathe.


	3. Black As My Heart

**Black As My Heart**

 

Soulnames go gray when the person they refer to dies, and Avon has a habit of checking his compulsively. Sliding his cuff up just enough that the first, straight line is visible, observing it's still black, and letting his sleeve fall again. Several times a day––that Tarrant sees. In reality it’s probably even more pathetic than that. Tarrant mocks the nervous tick, sensing weakness and going for it, jockeying for power. Avon puts him in his place, eyes narrow. Tarrant is surprised when, after Avon’s gone, Cally calmly mentions she'll kill Tarrant if he pulls something like that again.

"I thought you were the reasonable one," Tarrant sneers.

Cally smiles tightly at him. "You do not know me well."

It doesn't take Tarrant long to guess that the ambiguous straight line is the initial stroke of an R. And then he really _does_ decide it's in his best interest to never mention this again. Tarrant wonders if somewhere in the galaxy, this man he's never met has developed a bad habit of fiddling with his sleeve, too––checking and re-checking the first straight line of a K.

On Terminal, Servalan's people mocked up a Blake whose arm had been shot off, because the strategists didn't know what it had said and whether Avon would check to be sure of his identity. When Servalan says Blake is dead, Avon, who is a terrible actor, tries and fails not to smirk. It only lasts an instant, but it’s enough to give him away.

"What do you know?" Servalan demands. "What have you heard? Where is he?"

"I haven't heard anything. I know nothing more than that."

It clicks for Servalan, and Tarrant has never seen her look astounded before. "We considered the odds of that too astronomically unlikely to figure seriously into our predictions."

"Nevertheless," Avon says, and Tarrant begins to hope they'll get out of this, somehow. That Avon will beat the odds again. 


	4. Drawing a Blank

**Drawing a Blank**

 

Not a single memory. No database photo Avon can ever recover. They didn't keep good files on Blake before the first round of conditioning, which is when it was lasered off. A standard procedure, meant to dehumanize him. Blake hadn't been important enough to merit proper record-keeping, back then.

The fact of the matter is, Blake cannot remember his mark at all. Avon wonders if he fought for it at the time. He feels irrationally like Blake betrayed someone, perhaps himself, by having been able to forget it. But that is ridiculous. What does it matter? Who ever finds their mark-mate, anyway? And it is far too much to ask, given that Blake cannot even remember what his mother's face looked like.

It shouldn't bother Avon, who has always been logical and practical and above this. But he rubs his hands, tracing the small, bird-like glyph that he's never seen an answer to, and finds it does.


	5. Free Will

**Free Will**

He'd told Anna it didn't matter. It didn't. He'd wanted to chose his affiliations for himself. Her sharing his Mark would have been too perfect. Difficult to believe. He'd loved her in spite of their not matching––because of it, even. What they had was his, theirs––built and chosen.

Yet somehow he isn't surprised when he sees Blake's mark and almost thinks, for a moment, tired as he is, that it's his own arm strapped down to the med-bay table.

Of course he loves Blake. It comes so easily, and is, at the same time, more difficult than loving Anna. It is _more_ than loving Anna was. He'd known himself to be many things––but never disloyal. Never a traitor to someone he loved, someone he'd given his word to.

And before these shoes were old, as well. He is funeral meat, looking to coldly furnish forth a marriage table.

He had meant everything he’d told her, and to make a lie of it now by loving Blake more is unacceptable.

Finally, one day, it is unavoidable. It’s Avon’s turn to be injured, and Blake sees Avon's mark and stares at it, silent.

"How long have you known?” he murmurs.

There is no point in pretending he doesn’t know what Blake is talking about. Avon has never been able to lie to Blake. At best, he can conceal information in shades of ambiguity. Avon says it's been some time. It isn't good enough. Unfamiliar as the sensation must be, Blake still understands when Avon is sparing him. Blake can tell that Avon has known almost from the beginning.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Blake asks. Blake does, and Avon understands this, in his turn.

"Not particularly," Avon answers, turning from him. 

The only way he has left of honoring Anna is hurting himself. If that hurts Blake, too, he cannot let that be his problem.


	6. Good Reasons

**Good Reasons**

He could just tell Avon. He could strip off his shirt and say "There, will _that_ make you stay?" A part of him hopes it's what Avon's hoping for, but it doesn't seem terribly likely.

He doesn't want Avon to stay just because Blake has a mark on his arm that matches Avon’s own. He doesn't want Avon to stay because he battered at Avon with the force of his want and his will, and Avon felt obligated to him. For all Avon accuses Blake of trying to manipulate him, Blake barely lets himself try to persuade Avon to remain with them and participate in what they’re doing. He lets Avon play a long game against himself––moves and countermoves, reasons and their counter-arguments. Everything Avon's done, he's done because he thought it either personally expedient or right. If there are few other safe places for Avon to go––if Avon looks at Docholi and sees himself alone, on the run, in ten years, when even his considerable ability to earn and keep moving runs thin––that isn't Blake's fault. It is, in fact, just what Blake is working to change.

Avon plays solitaire without seeming to realize it, and Blake hardly steps in. He wants Avon to stay because Avon recognizes the work they do is necessary for his own survival and that of others. He wants Avon to admit, at last, the basic game theory principle that a thinker of his caliber must have acknowledged intellectually long ago. No one is safe unless everyone is. Safety is a matter of degrees, but in the Federation and the outskirts its presence shapes, the degree of inequality is such that even relative safety is an impossibility.

He wants Avon to do what's right because he has that in him, and always has. He wants Avon to want to be with Blake because that is _exactly_ where he wants to be––to choose what's already predestined, so it means something. If he ever tells Avon that he trusts him, he wants Avon to know he felt that way long before he had to bandage Avon's arm after Exbar. If he ever tells Avon he loves him, he wants Avon to know that he came to love Avon and loves him still for his presence and actions rather than some incalculable essence––that, in as much as anyone does, Blake chose this.

Besides, as Avon himself would point out––all Avon has to do is ask. If he ever asks, Blake will tell him everything.


	7. Intuition

**Intuition**

Blake was in the habit of abiding by his convictions. That this one came on suddenly made little difference.

Avon had turned away from him, to mull over the futility of altering the flight logs one last time before conceding what he already knew––that he had no choice but to collaborate with Blake. He was at his most desperate and his worst––actually contemplating things Blake found disgusting.

And still, Blake knew. He followed Avon through the door, giving them a moment of relative privacy. Avon turned to say something to him about not wanting to hear any more about his plan, but Blake stopped him short.

"Turn out your wrist."

Avon sneered, covering a flicker of shock and horror. So, Blake thought, you _could_ still shock him, then, under all that pretence.

"I don't think so."

The request wasn't a violation, but it was totally inappropriate. Like walking up to someone on the street and demanding to know their worst memory or all about their first sexual experience.

"Do it," Blake said simply, letting the command rest––applying no force to it.

"Why do you want to know?" Avon snapped.

"Why does anyone? You're not a stupid man, Avon."

"I don't think it likely," Avon said, mouth twisted unpleasantly, rolling back his cuff even as he did it. But he wouldn’t be doing it, if he really did think it was unlikely. Somehow he suspected, too.

"There."

Blake looked. A flicker of surprise, and then understanding passed over him. "That's what I thought," he said, turning to go.

"Wait," Avon said, and Blake turned back to Avon with a careful expression of disinterest on his face. "What did you see?”

"A Mark," Blake said, deliberately.

Avon glared at him "You're neither clever nor amusing."

"Why do you want to know?" Blake arched an eyebrow, repeating him.

"Why did _you?_ " Avon insisted. "Does it or doesn't it? I showed you mine, and now you _owe_ me."

Blake arched an eyebrow, but pushed his sleeve back, showing Avon his forearm. A flash of something like disappointment or panic flickered over Avon's face, and then he laughed. "I'm not used to seeing it inverted––and with the colors shifted. For a moment I didn't recognize it."

"Yes, I thought the same," Blake agreed, turning to go.

"This doesn't change anything," Avon called after him.

"No," Blake conceded, not looking at him, "I don't think it does."

After all, even at Avon’s worst and his most desperate, Blake had been sure of him from the beginning.


	8. Horoscope

**Horoscope**

Blake felt it as a loss––caught himself doodling the outline of it on paper and in programs that allowed you to make free-hand notes. Drawing it in dust or frost. Tracing it on the _Liberator_ 's clean, impermeable surfaces.

Cally caught him mindlessly tracing it on Orac’s casing and smiled gently. She came to sit on the flight deck couch with him.

"I'm thinking of having it tattooed back on," Blake admitted to her. "The next planet where it's safe. It won't be the same, I know, but I can't stand that they took _that_ from me."

"I understand, though I don't have one," Cally told him. "It was a part of your body, and of who you are."

"What's that?" Vila asked, coming over.

"My Mark," Blake said.

Behind Blake, Avon, standing at his console station, grew more attentive.

"Let's see it," Vila suggested. "Draw it out––we used to do all sorts of horoscoping with these. Want to learn some human nonsense, Cally?"

Cally laughed. “Go on then, Vila.”

"It was on my spine," Blake said, getting out his pad and stylus. "Base of the back."

"Is that a common position?" Cally asked.

"Not that rare," Vila said cheerfully. "I'm a wrist, Jenna's an arm. Gan's is over his heart, bless him."

"Avon's is spinal, like yours, Blake,” Cally said.

"Ah, it would be," Vila said sagely. "Spines are brainy. Cold."

"All right," Blake laughed.

"No offence," Vila said. "Oh, you're a circle––well, that balances it. The cartouche shape, now that's important. Circles are emotional. I’m a bit of an oval, myself."

"Your theory is flawed, Vila," Cally pointed out. "Avon has a circle, too."

"Hate's an emotion!" Vila protested.

"And then there’s a series of glyphs like––so,” Blake finished.

"Blake," Cally said, "when the Marks are identical––what does that mean?"

"Oh it's rare," Blake said. " _Very_ rare. They say everyone has a match, though few people meet them. 'Soulmates', if you want to call it that."

"I have seen this Mark exactly," Cally said.

"You're joking," Vila said.

"Every time I treat certain back problems," Cally persisted. "I am _not_ mistaken."

"You’re joking. You’re sure they’re not just––a bit similar? Opposites, even?" Vila asked, but Blake was already looking over his shoulder, finding Avon's position empty, wondering when he'd left, standing, and heading out the door to look for him.

“Vila, they were _exactly_ the same!” Cally said as he left the flight deck.

Blake found Avon in the corridor, leaning against the wall.

"How did it finish?" Avon asked, face held carefully neutral.

Blake shrugged. "You tell me."

"I'm as surprised as you are," Avon said guardedly.

"Actually, I find I'm not surprised," Blake said, pulling him into a kiss––a hand resting over the small of Avon’s back.


	9. Impatience

**Impatience**

 

Thirty minutes after the name appears on Kerr Avon's fifteenth birthday, his parents are carefully crafting a message to the parents of the boy whose name is on their son's wrist, trying to set up a formal introduction. Names don’t appear until the younger party turns fifteen, but the public record shows the other boy is just a month older than their Kerr. The fact that both boys are Earth-based Alpha has come as a bit of luck, but also increases the social difficulty of the issue. No one is easier to offend or has less to gain from marrying into the family than Other Alphas.

In the same time period, Kerr Avon has managed to break into Roj Blake's school records, because educational system computer security protocols are somewhat pathetic. It seems Blake needs a maths tutor––Avon doesn't mind much. He's good at maths, he'll tutor Blake. It’s possible, of course, that Blake hasn’t been paying attention to the tutors he _has––_ but that won't do. They'll have to get into a good university, if they're ever to make proper money and secure some freedom for themselves. (There is also, of course, the possibility that they won't _like_ one another, or even simply that they'll attend different universities, but Avon forcefully dismisses this.) This essay, on the other hand, is very good––thoughtful, forceful, with a few wry jokes that make Avon grin. Why doesn't Blake's school do _pictures_ in their records? Three disciplinary infractions––Blake needs to learn to say out of trouble.

Avon's head jerks up when he hears the front door chime. There's no way. Is there? But Blake’s records indicate he _does_ live in the London dome. There’s the sound of the door opening. And an unfamiliar voice. Male. His own name, said as a question.

Hastily Avon blanks his monitor and arranges his already neat things and smooths his hair and thanks long-illegal gods he doesn't have acne.

One of Avon's mothers knocks on the door.

"Yes?" he says lightly, assuming what he hopes is a casual, indolent pose in his chair.

"Kerr," his mother says, bemusement on her round, good-humored face as she shows in a tall boy with curly hair and a firm expression, "this is––Well. You've already been introduced, in a way."

"I was wondering if you might like to have a chat," Blake, it must be Blake, says. He raises an eyebrow at Avon in a way that doesn't have to try to look casual.

" _Yes,_ " Avon says, quickly correcting this to, "Perhaps we should."

"Well, now," his mother says, obviously amused, "I'll just leave you to it then."

"Thank you.” Blake smiles at her. "I should warn you, my parents will probably be along shortly, just as soon as they realise that I've snuck out. They're clever and they know me, so it won't take long. They'll run all the way here, though my note _did_ try and suggest it wasn't necessary. Two men. Tall. Angry with me. Difficult to miss. They were trying to write an introduction letter, you see. I had to put a stop to it."

Avon’s mother laughs. ”I'll put the kettle on and get out some biscuits.” She leaves them. The door closes.

"You ran all the way here?" Avon asks, like this is delightful––like not getting the formal introduction gift, and not waiting, and the way Blake is slightly out of breath are a series of excellent, thoughtful presents.

"I wanted to see you," Blake offers simply. He’s been waiting a month, and Avon gets the feeling Blake hates waiting. With a glance towards the bed, Blake asks if he can sit down, and Avon nods, thinking that Blake sitting on his bed is precisely what he wants to happen.

"Your essay on civic responsibility was good, if a little incendiary," he blurts out, managing to control his voice in such a way that this disclosure seems intentional.

"You broke into my school records?" Blake asks, amused.

Avon grins back."I was interested.”

"If I'd known you were going to peruse that, I'd have done a better job of it," Blake says ruefully.

Avon dismisses this. "The essay is perfectly acceptable, however your _calculus_ marks need to see a decided improvement."

Blake glances wryly at the room's collection of maths trophies. "Know a good tutor?"

"I'm a prodigy," Avon says without embarrassment. That is just what he is.

"I don't think I can afford your fees.” Blake shakes his head. "I'm not a rich man––my allowance is limited."

"We could take it out in trade," Avon says, before he can quite stop himself. "Please ignore that, it was––inappropriate.” He doesn't want Blake thinking him desperate, thinking of him as someone who sees Blake as a thing to fuck instead of a bold, wonderful brat who just came to his _house_ like that was _done_.

"I'll file the suggestion for later, when we know each other better," Blake suggests instead, giving him an affectionate look that indicates he likes Avon's starts and stops; sees and likes how anxious Avon is not to ruin this, not to give the wrong impression. And likes the look of him, and the idea of Avon trading tutoring for sexual favours.

"Speaking of files, how did you get _three_ disciplinary infractions?" Avon asks with a frown.

Blake shrugs. "Oh, one thing and another."

"And another still."

"Do _you_ like arbitrary authority? Do you find it easy and comfortable to deal with?" Blake's expression suggests he doesn't think it likely.

“No––but then neither do I enjoy being _caught_ in my disobedience."

"Mm. Perhaps you can explain more about how to manage that during these math tutorials––“

"Perhaps," Avon says, finding himself leaning towards Blake.

An unknown man bellows ' _Roj_!' from the living room, and Avon hastily leans back. The voice is unknown to Avon, at least––Blake’s sigh indicates it is terribly familiar to him.

"It's tea and biscuits for us," Blake says grimly.

"And a thorough dressing-down for you," Avon says with a wicked smile.

"It made the two of us happy," Blake says bluntly. "And we're the people really concerned, after all. Besides, I'll bet you none of them actually _wanted_ to write a damn letter and chaperone us."

"It did," Avon agrees.

"Mm?" Blake asks.

"Thank you for coming," Avon says. "And for getting punished for it. And for having my name."

"Don't mention it," Blake says. For the first time he shows a bit of hesitance as he, briefly, squeezes Avon's arm.

Then one of Blake's fathers orders him to stop making out with this 'Kerr' and come out into the living room this instant. With a sigh, Blake gets up to do it, enjoying the way Avon automatically comes with him.


	10. The More Things Change

**The More Things Change**

 

The Auronar don't have marks. It's one of the things that made Jenna nervous about Cally, before they got to know one another. Gan's people are a superstitious lot, and they brand the name off when they become adults. Vila knows Gan still remembers it though, and hasn't had the heart to ask if it belonged to the woman who died. It's unlikely––it’s a big galaxy, after all, and the Federation restricts soulname information as it restricts movement, free travel and settlement. Finding the person whose name you have is a minor miracle. But the way Gan looks at his arm sometimes, tenderly, makes Vila wonder if his miracle came and went.

It is _supposed_ to be a miracle. They’ve all seen the vids, promising that's what it's like. If Vila ever runs into anything matching the alien script on his arm, he’ll feel conned by the universe if it isn’t hearts and flowers and the two of them stealing fabulous things together until they die. They all know the stories, which circulate freely, even as the cultural norms of the Federation discourage talking about and showing the names on your arms. And because it’s supposed to be a miracle, none of them mention what they can see in front of them. Because it's confusing. And awful. And nothing like the vids.

Blake normally wears chaste, voluminous sleeves, but occasionally, because he's tired and he’s not going to be held down by repressive taboos and because _he_ is not ashamed of anything, he wears rolled-up shirtsleeves. He lets his pronoun fall heavy when he talks about not being ashamed. _He_ isn’t––why should he be?

Everyone pretends they can't see 'Kerr A––‘ slipping up Blake's forearm and under his cuff as he and Avon tear strips off each other. It makes Vila feel a little sick. Avon never shows his––layers on layers, thick leather over the top, like he wants a new, unmarked skin.

Why they don't do anything about it, Vila doesn't know. He'd know if they were doing something, though. Everyone would. They all _want_ them to, really, because watching this is like working at a meat-packing factory that butchers unicorns. Even the most worldly of them believed in this, to some degree. They all _still_ half expect music to swell out of nowhere, happy tears, joyful embraces and pet names. They all still expect everything to have been some misunderstanding or mistake.

Vila doesn't know if Blake and Avon have ever even spoken about it. He'd say 'how could they _not_ have done?', but, well. Avon.

Once, while alone with Vila, Gan said that he felt sorry for Blake. How’d a nice man like that end up with––He hadn’t finished, because the taboo runs deep. Vila’s tempted to say opposites attract, but that’s not it. They aren’t opposites. He doesn't see it everyday, but it _is_ there––there’s something in Blake's warmth that marries easily to Avon's sharp bursts of good humor. But mostly you can see the similarities when things are going wrong. In Blake's moments of cold logic and willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. How absolutely, obsessively driven he can be. Everything Avon says he hates in Blake maps neatly back onto himself. Vila wonders if it's possible that someone can fit the worst part of you––if you can match there, more than anywhere else.

Blake depends on their link more than Avon, who doesn't touch it. In a tense moment, a tight escape, Blake holds out a hand for what he needs and knows whatever it is must be in Avon's hand, and that Avon's hand is already next to his own, concentric circles of knowledge of one another spiraling forever. What none of them talk about has sometimes saved their lives.

Avon doesn't leave, though he talks about it constantly, like a broken record. When he actually tries it, at a neutral research station, Blake is so coldly furious with him that he doesn't try and stop Avon going. After Avon either sees the limits of his plan or repents (if he ever actually wanted anything more than for Blake to make him stay), Blake barely speaks to him. Vila watches Avon go a little desperate, watches him crack as Blake responds to whatever Avon says by talking to someone else; answering Avon in monosyllables if he absolutely has to. It's not a punishment Vila would have thought Avon would even care about––but it seems to be Avon's nightmare, and either Blake knew it or driving Avon mad just comes naturally to him.

It doesn't really stop until Avon comes to collect Blake, stripped to the waist, off Horizon. Like lost property, clearly marked. Blake speaks to him properly again, and as bad as their arguing ever was, the whole ship breathes out.

Jenna, obviously uncomfortable with the thought, suggested to Vila once that Avon probably thinks Blake shows his name as a form of control. Everyone knows who Avon belongs to, including Avon. But Vila isn't sure, because he thinks Avon doesn't care enough about the rest of them to make that properly hurt him. For Avon, the worst thing must be _having_ the mark. Blake is showing who _he_ belongs to, if anything. Only Blake could make that kind of weakness something like a power-play.

Vila doesn't like to think about it. All he knows is, the name is why Avon doesn't leave, and why he wants to, badly. And that it's nothing like the vids.


	11. All Due Formalities

**All Due Formalities**

 

They meet very formally, at fifteen, after their names come in (Kerr having waited three months for the privilege). It is an utter disaster. Kerr calls Roj an idiot––a dogmatic lumpen bore. Roj calls Kerr selfish, superficial, vicious, and about as much of a joy to be around as a dead, rotting dog, not failing to point out that, at least at some point in _its_ life, the dog was probably pleasant and useful.

Their parents are clenched-teeth polite and worried, trying not to blame one another's child-rearing or lash out at one another's awful offspring. Only Kerr's mother seems to think the problems surmountable, and not even entirely unexpected. "Never can do anything the easy way, can you Kerr?” she sighs.

"He's _vile_ ," Kerr hisses.

"And you're already working out your best put-downs for the next meeting," his mother says in a long-suffering tone.

He glances up at her. "How did you know?"

"It's a deep mystery," she says, rolling her eyes.

Roj is very good at strategy games, and plays at tournament level. Suddenly Kerr is over chess, back-seating his climb up the adult-league ranks, only interested in learning the wide variety of games Roj plays, and in being much, much better at them than him. He shows up at tournaments smiling beatifically, and is smug to discover that, with all the practice he's put in against computer opponents, he's better than anyone Roj regularly plays against--but enraged that he is _not_ yet better than Roj. When Roj tries to kibbitz and give him hints, as he would any other opponent in friendly games, Kerr does not take it well. At all.

They stake out camps––the games Roj wins at and the games Kerr wins at. They almost don't seem to care about playing their own games. Kerr wants to play war-games because Roj is better at them, and Roj wants micro-tactics scenarios because they're Kerr's.

It gets worse when they test into the same college. They acquire an annoying scholastic habit of referring to each other by surname only. With seven thousand pupils, they might easily have avoided each other, might have never even met––but sure enough Kerr joins Debate because of who's President and Roj takes Advanced Computer Science seemingly to blow it off and flirt with _some girl_ in it, all just to annoy Kerr.

Kerr's parents get these reports second hand. Kerr's mother has some doubt as to whether Roj is actually flirting with anyone who isn't Kerr, but knows Kerr would try and choke his own reflection if Roj looked at it too long.

And then there are the cycles in which Kerr decides he adores Roj and Roj wants nothing to do with him, and there's a lot of loud, emotive music from Kerr’s room and the household goes through tissues at an alarming rate. And sometimes Roj drops by in what Kerr's mother assumes are _his_ phases, looking forlorn and asking whether Kerr will speak to him (no), all but making a willow-cabin at Kerr’s gate and calling on his soul within the house, and then unsubtly asking Kerr's mother to talk about her son.

Kerr has never been stupid, and he _is_ right about at least one of his reasons for not getting along with his mark mate. Roj _is_ foolhardy in his politics, and bound to bring disaster down on them both. Roj says that Kerr needn't ever care about anyone himself, then, and Kerr says the authorities will think him guilty by association whatever he does, thanks to Roj's idiocy. And anyway, though he doesn't say it, Kerr cares enormously about _Roj_ , so the point is totally moot.

By the time they manage, in university, to lose their virginities to one another (despite Kerr's howling paranoia and subsequent depression about some boy in physics Roj went on a date with to punish Kerr for saying he didn't care what Roj did and _he_ was having a _lot_ of sex himself, thanks), the rest of the parents have come to understand what Kerr's mother suspected all along. When Kerr warns the four of them to get off planet before the Freedom Party crackdown occurs, she has bags packed, and runs a cautious eye over the visas Kerr's faked for them, unsurprised to find them perfectly in order. Kerr gets Roj off planet and saves him from having his mind wiped by sheer force of will. If the children are terrorists now who don't call or visit often for security reasons, and also because they can be negligent boys, then she doesn't mind that much. They seem well and happy, after all. Much better adjusted than they were as teenagers.


	12. Retitled

**Retitled**

 

Blake makes sure to go for Travis' arm when Travis raids the Freedom Party meeting because he doesn't like what that arm has to say. He doesn't get his own soulname wiped because it reminds him of what he can't let himself be. He is good, straining hard against the part of him that isn't.

According to his body and his fate, Avon only deserves Anna, a woman who loved herself more than him, and who betrayed him because of this. That his own soulmate could do that to him says something about how much Avon actually values himself, under all the bravado.

When Blake and Avon have discussed everything else they need to after the disaster on Gauda Prime, they finally speak of this.

It disturbs Avon that Anna reminded him a little of Blake. It disturbs Blake that a flat description of Travis before his injuries—pale, dark haired, intense—might as easily be a description of Avon. They frame one another as the standards Anna and Travis failed to align with, rather than as distorted reflections of Anna and Travis.

Blake is inclined to believe in free will, in people overcoming their limitations and becoming, earning, something better than what some arbitrary force declared was their due. Avon is inclined to believe the system imperfect, the universe capable of clerical error.

Blake says he doesn't need a reminder anymore, not when he has Avon to check him. Avon says that he's past Anna now, and isn't looking back. Shooting Blake was the greater, more formative trauma. The murder he did out of love, and the one he regrets. The thing they barely survived, but did. What is Anna to that? Back-story. Incidental.

Avon says they should blast the names out of existence—drop their baggage and be free of the weight. Yes, Blake agrees. And then they should get new names. Names they choose.

Avon calls it saccharine foolishness, which of course means he wants it desperately and is pleased Blake has suggested it, at last.


	13. Orderly

**Orderly**

 

Everything is as it should be. Blake is decorously soul-matched with Avalon—all their goals align. Meanwhile Avon is matched with Servalan, and understands her. He and Servalan are on their way to the top, and if it is the top of a pile of bodies––well, that’s how the world works, isn't it?

They meet during one of Servalan’s attempts to obtain the Liberator. Looking at Blake, Avon suddenly realizes he's tired and jaded and bored. Blake—isn't boring. Avon is so distracted that he makes a mistake, and lets Blake kidnap him. Servalan of course is totally unmoved, betting that Avon will figure out his own way out of the situation, trusting him not to get himself killed, ultimately not caring more about Avon than she does about her own position.

Avon doesn't try to escape quite as hard as he should. He has many opportunities, but always finds himself pulling back, finding little problems with each of his plans, until he’s gone too far and leaving has become impossible.

He's never been _that_ loyal to the Federation, which in part explains it. Time passes, and in a battle Avon acts to save the _Liberator_ —and his own skin by proxy, he insists. Then he saves Blake's life, and his justifications for this are even more enfeebled. Blake decides to _trust_ him, baffling everyone. He says that Avon can't be terribly interested in helping the Federation, no matter who his soulmate is—not when they've left him to die. Avon sees a little justice in that. But moreover he has to admit that he knows Servalan perfectly, whereas he feels he can never know Blake. That not knowing is not simply 'exciting', like Blake is some slick new action-viz, but rather—wonderful. That crashing into Blake in heated, uncertain conversations with shifting values and parameters is deeply fulfilling.

Blake would never hurt Avalon, no matter what he wants. He’d never act on any of it. Thus Avon feels like a condemned man being reprieved when Avalon respectfully suggests that, though her alliance with Blake has never been unsatisfactory, the two of them might chiefly share a cause of the heart. They might be platonic soul mates, rather than destined lovers.

She is giving Blake his freedom, and Blake knows it. She may also be right. As much as they both care about their work, Blake wants, _needs_ more. Something beyond and outside of it. Whereas if Avalon never had another moment of intense emotional and physical passion in her life, she'd consider that life well-regulated and well-spent. Blake and Avalon are soulmates because the cause is the thing they both care about most—but just after that, more than anything else, Blake wants Avon.

Neither Blake nor Avon have ever been in love before. They make a rich, painful, jumbled mess of it. Avon's priorities will never be Blake's, but personal loyalties are more than enough for him. Most people's deep convictions can't match up to the commitment Avon gives the people he cares about.

Because there is a sympathy between them, Avon holds out some hope that Servalan is capable of falling in love. It can't be with each other—he and Servalan are too similar for that. But even as Avon tries, with Blake, to kill her, and does so with a clear conscience, he paradoxically hopes that she will find something other than herself worth living for. He hopes she dies having been, at some point, happy.


	14. Climactic Spin

**Climactic Spin**

 

Tarrant was nervous. This was Blake, he was fairly sure, but not Blake as he'd been led to expect him, from the man's reputation, Vila and Cally's reports and Avon's few hints. Blake reached up to adjust the flight control, and Tarrant spotted the mark on his wrist and exhaled.

“Well, that's a relief," he said, suddenly sitting much more comfortably.

"What is?" Blake asked guardedly.

Tarrant rolled his eyes. "You can drop the act, I know who and what you are."

"Do you indeed," Blake said dangerously. Tarrant waved him off with his hand.

"You'd have to be a piece of work to betray _that_. I've seen the lowest crimmos wibble like infants at the prospect. Now we’ve a lot to go over before Avon catches up with us. Yes, that’s right––I'm one of Avon's people, and he's finally found you. He’s been searching since I met him, two years ago––you’re a hard man to track down. We got separated after the crash, but the others are probably still on the planet, trying to get to your base. Vila's still with us, and Orac's still around, more’s the pity. We lost Cally when Avon tried to rescue you from Terminal––”

“I have no idea––”

“No, I know you weren’t there, but we didn’t know that at the time. That’s when we lost the _Liberator_ as well. Not your mark mate's finest hour, I'm afraid. Still, now it's obvious why he thought he had to do it. He never mentioned _that_." Tarrant gestured at Blake's wrist.

"Avon's had a bad time of it lately. I’m sure you miss him too, but _he's_ gone slightly mad around the edges. That ex-girlfriend of his––”

“Anna?” Blake asked.

“That’s right. Anna Grant. She _wasn't_ dead after all, _and_ tried to kill him. We tried to do a nice, simple heist—you know, Avon and Vila's idea of a pleasant family day out—and got thoroughly reamed by Servalan. Then, there was some sort of him-or-Vila situation, and Avon panicked and chose himself, and Vila doesn't want to forgive him and he doesn't want to forgive himself. Most recently he tried to set up an alliance of independent warlords and got thoroughly betrayed. That's in shambles now. He's embarrassed as hell, but he's hoping you can make something of it––and judging from your reputation, you might be able to. Essentially—go gently. He’s frazzled and liable to make mistakes. Dayna and Soolin and I—that’s the rest of us—have all been looking into options for therapy, or at least a rest cure. We've even got some lovely brochures stashed back in _Scorpio_. Maybe you can talk him into it. Vila says you can talk him into anything."

"You know," Blake said, "I put rather a lot of thought and care into testing people with this bounty hunter set-up."

Tarrant snorted. “Come off it, Blake. It’s a terrible idea. Liable to get you shot. I should have known you and Avon were mark mates, you're both melodramatic showmen. Actually, while we’re talking about it, you should ask Soolin to show you the 'Join the Revolution' powerpoint Avon gave the warlords. It's very special.” Tarrant grinned, pronouncing ‘special’ with relish. “Though it loses something without the presentation cues. I'm sure if you ask nicely he'll do the Climactic Spin. Dayna saw him practicing—she says she cried laughing."

"I hear," Blake said thirty minutes later to a wild-eyed Avon, waving a gun around at Blake's terrified, innocuous base personnel, "you have a very special powerpoint to show me."

" _What?_ " Avon hissed.

"I hear there is even," Blake's eyes crinkled attractively, "an accompanying Spin."

Behind him, Dayna lost it.

"He's not _really_ a bounty hunter, for god's sake," Tarrant sighed. "Honestly, you two _do_ deserve each other."

Blake opened his arms expectantly, the motion drawing his sleeve back slightly. Avon's eyes flickered from the mark back to Blake's face. "Come on, Avon. Even with your hatred for public displays of affection, you have to admit a two-year separation justifies a modest one."

Avon allowed a (sulky and bewildered, on his part) hug.

"I'll kill him for telling you about the powerpoint," he murmured into Blake's coat. “I’ll _kill him._ ”

"Yes, dear."


	15. Character Sketch

**Character Sketch**

 

Avon dumped a few sheets of paper and some pencils in front of Blake. "Draw it."

Blake arched an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Your Mark is gone. They cleaned it off you. Ergo, you will have to draw it. You said to Cally––” who had gone, a few minutes ago, leaving Blake alone on the flight deck–-he’d been unaware that Avon had listened to that conversation, “––that you _remembered_ it perfectly."

Blake looked at him steadily. Avon's face was expressionless, and he wore a particularly buttoned-up outfit, including the single glove most Alphas went in for.

"If you'd like me to confirm or deny a match, I'd be happy to oblige you," Blake said evenly.

Avon’s tone was so flat, and the request so strangely delivered, that Blake had no idea how to react. He wanted and would normally be inclined to read this as a very romantic request. But there was nothing seductive in how Avon asked for it. He might almost have wanted the thing for research purposes. The question was as blatant as a proposal, but Blake _still_ didn’t feel he could presume on it in that light.

Avon shook his head. "This is the one absolute in the universe. It admits no doubt. If someone showed you theirs, you might confirm a likeness out of pity, or in order to manipulate them. You might deny one for some other reason. You are difficult to predict. I don't know that you would, but the fact that you _could_ is unacceptable."

Blake was suddenly livid, and stood. "If you think so little of me, you can go to _hell_ , Avon."

"Please," Avon said, and Blake wondered if this was the first time he'd heard Avon use the word. "That is not––the problem. I haven't explained properly. I don't know if I can. This is the one thing that admits no doubt. No equivocation. I won’t have it––Blake, please do this."

The 'for me' was silent.

Blake sighed, and said a curt "Fine". He took up a pencil and started, and Avon sat on the couch, facing away from him.

"Not going to watch?" Blake asked a little maliciously, feeling like he'd been asked to perform.

"I can't," Avon said simply, and Blake looked up at the tight line of his back and felt a stab of pity.

“Avon…we don't have to do this."

"We do. It won't change––our situation. I don't think it could. But I have to know."

Blake swirled the pencil around, circumnavigating the starting glyph. _Our situation_. Hope lanced through him, hurting like fear.

"You've never said."

"No. I felt––pushed to crisis point, as it happens. I have to take off my glove to work. You haven't seen my mark yet, but you might. Anyone might and mention it. You might tell everyone what yours used to look like. There were too many variables. I had to act."

“What will you do if it’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I could stop feeling as I do, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you’d be with me, regardless? Because that’s what I want,” Blake told the back of Avon’s head.

“I’m with you now.”

“ _Avon._ ”

“As it happens, I’m not being facetious. That is how I think of myself. And now you know. And soon, we will both know this.”

Blake felt incredibly tense as he switched colors, and he could hear Avon breathing, could sense him trying to count the number of colors Blake was using. Blake remembered, as hard as he could, and was eminently careful. When he finished he put a hand on Avon's shoulder. Avon shuddered slightly at the contact and turned, at last. Blake put the drawing into his hands and waited.

"You don't draw very well," Avon said after a moment.

Blake rolled his eyes. "Perhaps that's exactly what it looked like." _Well?_ he wanted to say, and couldn’t bring himself to. Avon’s face gave nothing away.

"No. And you've made a mess of the swirl in the corner. You really _don't_ know the back of your own hand, do you?” Avon tsked, taking off his own glove. "It's distinctly blue, not teal, and as you see, the curve is more pronounced––" Avon took a sharp breath as Blake caught his hand and licked it, tracking the pattern with his tongue.

"I'll try and pay more attention this time," Blake murmured.

"Do," Avon said raggedly.


	16. Sacrosanct

**Sacrosanct**

 

_The birthday of my life_

_Is come, my love is come to me._

_—Rossetti_

 

Avon glances up when he hears the name. He stands and crosses the room, quickly.

"Roj Blake?" he asks.

"That's right," Blake says evenly, not sure what he wants. This becomes clear when, to Blake's surprise, the stranger pulls Blake down into a passionate kiss.

"This is probably impossible, but you're not named 'Kerr Avon', by any chance?" Blake gasps when he's allowed to come up for air.

The other man's eyes glint. "Right answer."

Two guards hustle over to find out what's going on.

"Good," Avon says, "we'll need to talk to your captain. We have _plans_ to make, don’t we darling?" He elbows Blake pointedly in the side.

“Oh yes,” Blake says dryly, squeezing his shoulder in acknowledgement.

And when that tired, beleaguered gentleman is in front of them, Avon insists on being given a cabin.

"We don't have those facilities on board," the captain says reasonably. "Surely you can't expect us to treat prisoners—"

"This is not some request for special treatment. If we were anyone other than exactly who we are, a top computer expert in disgrace—"

“––and a political criminal," Blake informs him.

"Then _this_ ," Avon holds up his arm triumphantly, "would guarantee a full pardon. Do you know the odds of this? Allow me to tell you. A _billion_ to one."

"It's legally binding," Blake insists. "The highest custom. Even the Federation hasn't been able to eradicate that."

"This is the nearest thing to holy left in a disenchanted world," Avon says with a mixture of smugness and intensity.

"Don't you need to be married to merit a honeymoon suite?" the captain asks, wondering if he'll have to do it.

"We _are_ married," Avon says through gritted teeth, impatient with the man. " _That_ is the law—we have been married since birth. If we are otherwise committed, _this_ takes precedence and dissolves those unions."

"There was at least one war about it," Blake observes cheerfully. "And a Tudor succession crisis."

"How clever you are," Avon says with approval, coming easily as Blake pulls him into a kiss. Uncomfortable, the guards look elsewhere for a moment.

"What do you need?" Blake murmurs sensually.

Avon leans up to whisper into his ear. "A computer access key."

Blake shudders like he's just heard something deeply erotic, then breaks away.

" _Well?_ " Avon demands, forcing the guards to deal with his request.

Avon is aggressively middle class and obviously has been all his life. The guards are from more plebeian backgrounds, and the combined weight of Avon’s entitlement and the respect they feel for an actual confirmed soul bond right in front of them forces the issue. Blake takes advantage of the distraction Avon's creating to clap Vila on the shoulder and mutter "Computer access key" in an undertone.

"Oh Blake, congratulations!" Vila says, slipping it out of the pocket of a guard Avon's harassing and into Blake's hand as they do a manful shake. Then Blake shoves his hands, and thus the key, into his pocket in a casual, gormless 'can't believe my luck!' gesture.

"Are you ready, beloved?" Avon asks, throwing his arms around Blake.

Blake turns to him. "I feel like I've been ready all my life," he coos.

Avon's lip twitches like he's actually going to laugh, and he very quickly gives Blake a _stop that_ glare that he lets melt a second later into a wide-eyed, lost expression. "Oh, _cupcake_."

Blake grimaces and hopes it looks enough like a smile. "Schnookums," he challenges back.

"Dear heart—No, my _burly rebel_." Oh god, Blake may yet kill him before the night is up.

"Good luck!" Vila calls after them.

"Mazel tov!" Nova tries, bemused.

Some officer has had to hastily vacate his cabin for the night, and when the door closes Blake mouths _Do we still need to make noise?_

Avon nods, mouthing _L_ _istening devices_ _._ Blake tosses him the computer access key, and bounces down on the bed with a groan.

"Oh Kerr, tell me about yourself.”

"I prefer Avon," Avon says sweetly. "Roj, my crumpet."

Blake winces. "Fair enough. No words then, cariad––"

Avon is doing something quick and quiet with the computer, keeping his typing low. The words _Breathe heavily_ appear on the monitor, and, rolling his eyes, Blake does so. Avon theatrically joins in (it’s a little distracting), and they continue in this vein until Avon waves his hand in a _cut_ motion.

Avon opens a music playing program, creates a long, automatically varying loop of this breathing, with pauses, and then sets it going, turning off the room's audio, piping the file directly into the ship's surveillance system, sliding it in where the data from this room should go. Blake, following what he’s doing and taller, reaches up to yank out the room's bugs so they can't feed the system contradictory information. He glances at Avon for confirmation—is there some reason not to do this he hasn’t seen yet?—but Avon nods. Blake rips them away and returns to the bed.

" _That_ is a relief," Avon says, joining him there because it's the only real place to sit. This cabin is _not_ what they'd have been afforded on any civilized planet. For a newly-discovered soulbond, they should be looking at a week in the best hotel on offer. At least.

"I can see what they mean about all this, I suppose," Blake considers. "It's a little uncanny. We work remarkably well together."

“Yes--which won't be terribly useful on Cygnus Alpha, unless you like farming. I don't."

“Neither do I, particularly," Blake agrees. “Of course, given that you're apparently as good with computers as you said you were, you might always fake the running logs. Let them dump the bodies halfway there and save on fuel. Then we wouldn’t have to see the sights of Cygnus, would we?”

"Ah," Avon says wistfully, "would that you were in earnest, rather than blatantly testing me. You needn’t bother. I'll tell you for nothing that I'm not a terribly moral person. And that I've already thought of and rejected that plan."

"Because they'd have to get rid of you as well," Blake observes. "You'd be evidence."

"Mm. I meant what I said earlier—Well, a part of it, anyway. You are clever." He moves to kiss Blake, and Blake pulls back slightly.

"I honestly never thought it'd come up, but—I should tell you, I have moral issues with the whole concept of 'soulmates'. I don't like the idea of predestination. It's tyrannical. How can you love someone without choosing to be with them?"

Avon gives him a sour look, which he quickly replaces with a saccharine smile. He swings his legs over Blake, sitting on top of him, and leans down to speak to Blake softly. "Then you don't mind that I've fucked a lot of people before you, Blake? You won't mind at _all_ if I do it again? How generous of you. I admire your deep respect for free will."

Blake suddenly finds he does mind. Rather a lot. His expression must show it—Avon just laughs at him, as if Blake's reaction is a compliment.

"That is what I thought. Incidentally, I mind everyone you've fucked. Cuckolded me with, I think you’ll find. I never want to hear about them, unless I obsessively ask to be told how much better I am, in detail. And if you feel the urge to fuck _anyone_ in future, _it had better be me_."

"How possessive," Blake says, as if that is a bad trait.

Avon grins at him. "So are you."

"I never have been, before."

"No. But none of the others were me, and you're going to be now, aren't you?"

Blake can't quite deny it. "So you put stock in this, then?"

“Of course not. It's ludicrous. Cosmic destiny and all that nonsense. And yet it is _my_ cosmic destiny. I own you, and I want you, and I can already feel that all the mad blather about the world clicking into place around your soulmate was perfectly true. If anything, it was an understatement of the case, made by people who couldn't find the words for it."

Blake swallows. “ _Avon_ _—_ what are we going to do about the ship? I don't want our clicking-world to be _Cygnus Alpha_. It lacks a certain romance."

"With this," Avon brandishes the key, "that terminal, and enough time for a code to compile, by tomorrow morning I can be in complete control of the ship from this room. An access re-route, some door controls, enough oxygen loss in the relevant areas to kill the crew—"

"Or knock them unconscious," Blake says severely.

"As you like, though I don't think anyone would mourn Reiker. That is beside the point—if I start now, then we are golden. And you and I can go anywhere."

"Anywhere there's a hearty rebel cell," Blake puts in.

"We can discuss that later," Avon says thinly.

"As long as you know my answer isn't going to change," Blake says, making Avon groan. "I don't want to—part with you over this."

"You're not going to," Avon says. "That is not an option. We will reach a compromise acceptable to both of us, but since we met you ceased to be a single unit, responsible only to yourself. Legally, and in moral fact. If you leave me, I will not accept it. We are _miraculous_. This is _sacred_. Do you understand that?"

Blake looks up at Avon's blazing eyes, his total conviction, the desperate yearning in his expression. If it is possible to love anyone in the space of an hour, Blake loves Avon, and Avon apparently loves him. How Blake might love Avon (who believes in him, and knows exactly how to annoy him, and anticipates his plans) in a week he can't say. He suspects that, like everyone who's tried to talk about these bonds before him, he won't be able to find the words.

"Break the computer," Blake agrees. "Set it in motion. And then we'll have time to make love. We'll broker an agreement between us when we see what resources we have, and get the other prisoners settled somewhere safe—if they want to go, that is."

"Acceptable." Avon slides off him and heads to the computer. "What else were you, incidentally? Besides a political agitator?"

"Engineering and project management."

“ _That_ makes sense."

"Something the matter, Avon?"

"Nothing, 'cupcake'. Though it does mean you can help me plan exactly what we'll need to do to take the ship."

Blake stands behind Avon, hands on his shoulders, and they work out how it will go and set the scheme in motion. Avon sets up timed protocols, ready to click into place at the change-over between night and morning shifts.

"We should probably use the next hours to sleep," Avon says, practically.

"Probably," Blake agrees. "But we're not going to."

"No," Avon admits, turning his face to Blake's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ganked the Rossetti quote off an Isis fic (and Rossetti first, we must presume).


	17. Cell Mates

**Cell Mates**

 

Blake looks up when another prisoner is thrown into his cell. The place doesn't look designed for double occupancy, and Blake is very aware that he's still under interrogation.

"I don't suppose you'd simply tell me whether you're a Federation agent?" Blake asks. He’s been worn down by the barrage of questions and sickened by the recent deaths of his friends, and he isn’t in the mood for more complicated games.

"Let me just answer that for you," the other man says with thick sarcasm. "Move over. I don't know about you, but I've had a hell of a day, and there's room enough on that bench for two."

"What are you in for?" Blake asks him, scooting over. The newcomer takes a seat.

"I don't know," the other man snarls, clearly upset.

"You don't know what you've done?"

"Oh,” the other man smiles, sharp and cynical, “everyone has done something. It's a child's game. My mother used to run it just like this--'What have you done?' Then you’d confess the crime she knew about, and five others she didn't besides."

“Well, what are they asking you about?"

" _Nothing_ ," the other man hisses. "Nothing salient. Nothing I understand. Oh, a little about some minor, technically illegal research--but that is an infraction, not a crime. I should be fined, at worst, not hauled in here. Mostly they want to know about my politics. They are peculiarly unwilling to understand that I don’t have any."

“Ah, well, there we differ. I _have_ ," Blake says, with a sigh. The other man moves back slightly to get a better look at him.

"You're not an agent trying to draw me out," he concludes. "You're--Roj Blake, wasn't it? The leader of the Freedom Party." He says the last with the hint of a sneer. "I've seen you on the newscasts."

"And you'll see me again, soon," Blake says. "When you're released after this misunderstanding is cleared up, and I've been mind-wiped and made to renounce everything."

"The government does not alter the minds of civilians," the other man says carefully. “What you’re suggesting is highly illegal.”

"So was murdering all my friends, but they didn't balk at that,” Blake responds. Blake can hear a hint of trapped, pinched anger under his own smooth, declarative tone. He wonders if he’ll ever be completely free of that anger, now.

"I don't believe you," the other man says for the benefit of the listening devices, but his expression says that he knows what Blake's telling him is true. "You've been caught out in your terrorist acts, and you have every reason to try and blacken the good name of the Administration now."

"Think what you like," Blake answers, letting his own expression show a flicker of gratitude. A trace of amusement at the way his cellmate can say ‘the good name of the Administration’ in a technically unobjectionable, but simultaneously obviously facetious, tone. If, after a show trial, Blake is going to die or be mind-wiped and so effectively lose himself, perhaps forever, then it is good, at the last, to be believed. To have someone _acknowledge_ what has happened, even if that person doesn't necessarily believe anything can be done about it.

The other man smiles. "I always do.”

"What's your name?" Blake asks.

"Kerr Avon," the other man responds.

"Aren't you—?" Blake frowns, slight recognition sparking. He's seen that, written down. “Do I know you? I recognise your name.”

"Are you in a technical field?" Avon asks.

"Yes, engineering--on Aquitar, if you know it. Or I was, anyway."

"Two reasons, then. The papers on systems architecture and holistic environmental computing from the last two SPIDER conferences, which have been discussed a great deal since, and because I am also assigned to Aquitar. Hopefully, that is still the case."

"Ah," Blake's mouth twists in a smile. "So _you're_ that project analyst they brought in. The one they say is absolutely amazing, but unbearable about it."

Avon grins. "That's right.”.

"I feel I know you already--I've heard _so_ much about you," Blake says dryly.

"All good things, I hope," Avon teases.

“No, you don’t. You _like_ your awful reputation.” Blake shakes his head. "I can tell."

"Whereas I've put a few things together, and now realize I've heard rather a lot about you. You have your own professional reputation, though it has probably escaped your notice, given your heavy involvement in extracurricular activities."

"It has, actually. What is it?"

Avon opens his mouth to tell him, and they hear a soft, thin scream from down the hall. They simultaneously remember that whatever other people say about Blake as an engineer doesn’t really matter much, now.

"They've been asking you political questions," Blake says, returning to the point. “They've asked _me_ nothing _but_ political questions--which makes sense, but I would know if you were political, and you’re not.”

“ _I_ know that. Should we be comparing notes?" Avon asks. "That is, I presume, why we are in here, together. For listeners to benefit from our conference."

"What can they learn from us repeating their own questions back to each other?" Blake shrugs.

"Perhaps they're trying to test whether we're working together. We might know one another through Aquitar."

"It's a large project, but we might,” Blake concedes. "But now they know you're not involved. Unless we've put on quite an elaborate show."

"Is that _it?_ " Avon asks, shaking his head. "I can't quite believe it. If they suspect me, they might easily break into my home and personal computers and be _sure_. Well, not easily, it'd take them a lot of time, but it could be done, if I was not there to counteract it. They must know that."

"Then this is something else." Blake says, "Perhaps some sort of--punishment?"

"You aren't _that_ difficult to endure," Avon comments. Then, suddenly, as though this has sparked something, he moves from slumping against the wall with his arms crossed to sitting up straight. "Oh, I think we've been _very_ stupid."

"What is it?" Blake leans forward to watch his face as Avon works it out. Even in this grim situation, Blake takes a kind of pleasure in the sight.

"What's the punishment for military treason?" Avon asks.

“We’re civilians.”

“What if you’re not being _tried_ as one, because your crime is against the state?”

"That isn’t legal, but if they were to try it, then it’s exile for the traitor, their family, their mark-mate--oh. Oh, you don't think--"

"That is _exactly_ what I'm beginning to think. Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?"

"We're going to feel rather foolish if this isn't it. All right. On the count of three."

"Right."

"Well," Avon says, looking down at them. "That settles that. And _that_ is why they were _convinced_ I must be political. A man after _your_ own heart, after all."

"I can't believe they're actually going to punish you! I've never _met_ you! Leaving aside that their medical databases apparently record _precisely_ who everyone's matched with, and that they don't make that information public, _and_ use it to keep the military in line--"

"Whereas I can't believe you were so naive as to suppose you weren't signing my death warrant with your actions. That _is_ how the Federation promises to reward dissent, and you've excelled yourself in ensuring the threat would be carried out. Thank you so much, _beloved_."

"I'm sorry," Blake says through gritted teeth. He knows Avon is exactly as angry as he seems, but Blake trusts that if he can convey what they need to do to get out of here, then Avon, his mark mate, _will_ understand. Avon will see the virtues of being furious with Blake, say, in a fast shuttle headed for the outer colonies instead of this cell. Blake knows he couldn’t have managed to escape alone, guilty and depressed by his losses, relying on no one but himself. But perhaps with Avon, it’s possible. And he can’t let the other man down again. Blake always feels stronger when he can’t afford to brood, because there is someone to protect. The feeling seems to apply now, with Avon, even though in general the man seems quite capable of protecting himself. Blake motions at the door and stands.

"I'm sorry some accident of fate has landed me with a dangerous ideologue," Avon hisses, standing himself and coming along the other side of the door, not quite seeing what Blake wants yet but understanding that it’s something, and thus probably a better idea than doing nothing at all, "who valued neither his own safety, nor that of a totally innocent bystander—Me."

"Standing by in the face of atrocities is hardly an innocent activity," Blake hisses back with passionate intensity, and Avon's eyes go slightly darker. Blake mimes what he wants. Avon nods.

"You _bastard_ ," Avon says throatily, slamming his hand on the door.

"You selfish little _shit_ ," Blake shouts, slapping his hand against the wall, like the thwacking contact of flesh being shoved against it. "I can't believe I'm connected to a conniving rat like _you!_ "

"I'll kill you for this," Avon insists, and sure enough a guard rushes in. Effectively positioned on either side of the door, Blake and Avon are able to knock him out silently and jam the door open. A flurry of gestures convey the fact that the guard is more Blake's size than Avon’s. With a sheepish glance at the somewhat open door, Blake quickly strips the guard.

'Are you going to turn around?' he mouths at Avon, who is half guarding the door with the guard's gun, half watching Blake, and continuing to make percussive, scuffling sounds--like a guard breaking up a fight in progress--with his free hand on the wall.

Avon shakes his head slowly, stealing several theatrically appreciative glances. Blake rolls his eyes. Dressed, he slaps the guard's helmet over his head and snaps the gun out of Avon's hand. Avon gazes at the ground, looking uncharacteristically submissive.

"Right, prisoner--march. We have everything we need from you." The helmet disguises his voice, in case anyone is listening.

Avon gives him a look that clearly translates to _I was never very interested in this sort of sex play_ and walks.

They get out of the compound through a waste disposal chute. Blake knows about it because the Freedom Party have successfully executed a raid on a similar structure before, although Avon fails to appreciate this good fortune, or even to stop complaining about the smell for more than five minutes. Blake wonders if this is Avon’s way of dealing with stress. If so, it’s both exasperating and a bit endearing.

“We need to get through this security perimeter as well,” Blake points out when they’ve made it into the underbelly of the facility. The force wall around the compound stretches down even into the foundation-levels. The Party’s computer expert had devised a way around it, with some preparation, but Avon is evidently better. As good as the people on Aquitar (grudgingly) said. He sees it immediately.

“There should be a maintenance access panel--Ah, there. Excuse me.” A few minutes’ study and work, and they are out. No alarms. The shield snaps back into place behind them as though it has never been disturbed.

“Neat.”

Avon shrugs, slightly self-satisfied. “Most computer-based functions are.”

Blake rips off his helmet.

"What now?" Avon asks him, and Blake kisses him soundly, feeling a wave of relief, which compounds with his appreciation for how impressive Avon’s been this evening and a surreal pleasure at having found him, even here, even like this. Avon lets him, and when he pushes Blake back with a hand at his chest he doesn’t quite let go. "I meant--in a larger sense. For one, we are not having sex in a sewer. And beyond that, we need to get off planet. They may not have frozen my accounts yet--but obtaining visas will be impossible."

"I know a lot of free traders operating out of the Delta rings," Blake says, leading the way. "They bribe the inspectors or ghost through the sensor nets during solar radiation bursts, or move out in the electric shadows of large legitimate vessels. We can get to the rings without going above ground. If they _have_ frozen your accounts, the Freedom Party has some emergency funds they may not have found yet."

"And after that?"

Blake sighs. "There's nothing I can do for my friends now but regroup away from Earth. I'll avenge them in due course, by winning. It's the only vengeance they'd care about."

"And I am just supposed to accompany you, as an accessory?"

"Hardly that. You're the most useful person I can possibly imagine. I couldn't have done better. I am a _very_ lucky man."

"Yes, you are. And you are also assuming rather a lot of compliance on my part," Avon points out sourly.

"Am I? You can't lie low on a Federated world, and I don't think an uncivilized world would suit you. There are, of course, neutral planets--but you're a wanted man, and the Federation doesn't forget. Your safety lies in my victory. In _our_ victory."

"This is all your fault," Avon says matter-of-factly.

"Hardly--you were coy about your activities, but something tells me you weren't that shocked at being hauled into a detention center. Tell me, Avon, were you about to get _me_ in trouble?"

Avon laughs. "Well. Perhaps our time is wasted on recriminations. Anyway--at least now we’ve been introduced."

"Yes, let’s thank the Federation for their excellent match-making services,” Blake says dryly. Privately, he thinks it is perhaps the only good thing they’ve ever done. Exactly how good a thing it is doesn’t blot out their crimes or dampen his revolutionary ardor, but Blake does have to admit they’d done him a considerable favor. Once he sees the President tried for crimes against humanity, he’ll have to send him a really excellent fruit-basket. In jail.

“And perhaps afterwards, once we're safely off-Earth, we can work out our long-term plan in greater detail,”he finishes.

"I can see why we're matched," Avon says, taking his hand idly. "With my encouragement, you might really amount to something, Blake."

“I was thinking the same about you,” Blake retorts.

“No you weren’t. You’re much more polite than I am.”

“Fuck off, Avon.”

“I already told you, not in the sewers.”


	18. Detection

**Detection**

The blood rushed in his ears when he saw it. Either Anna had lied, or Blake was lying. Avon had no idea which or _why_ , but he knew he’d have to keep his own mark absolutely concealed until he could determine what was going on.

It might be an unwitting lie--Blake had, after all, been subjected to torture that altered him mentally and physically. Why anyone would have done  _this_  wasn’t clear, but Avon's paranoia seized on the unlikely composition of the  _London_ ’s compliment of prisoners. Someone handed the most dangerous political criminal of his generation a talented pilot, a top thief, his choice of brawn and one of the best living scientific minds (if Avon said so himself--and he did, because it would be stupid not to), all of whom, startlingly enough even given Blake’s charisma,  _were_  willing to follow him. If that was an accident, it was certainly an unlikely one, and whoever had permitted it should be killed for their incompetence. A puppeteer gone rogue might have arranged all of that--and might have wanted to give Avon a reason to stay with Blake. Avon knew he was weakest, here. Such a puppeteer might not have known about he and Anna’s clandestine relationship, and might thus have blundered.

Then again, how far back might such a plan reach? The actual mechanics of their transportation off Earth? The timing of their arrests? All the way back to the botched crime that had resulted in Anna's death? If you presumed someone could have bunged them all on the same ship intentionally, was it really that much more paranoid to suspect someone had arranged to have them arrested at the right time? Had they been taken into custody when they had, or at all, for Blake’s unwitting benefit? Could you push that further? Psychostrategic plans could spin out over the course of years. Had Avon’s original attempt at fraud been somehow stage-managed so that one day he might find himself on the  _London_ , an optimal degree of broken, prepared to give his loyalty to a man like Blake?

And there, all the doubt related to the original crime crept in. All the nagging paranoia as to how they'd been captured, why Avon had felt run ragged by someone who seemed to know his moves even as he made them. How easily he'd been taken and brought in, the second time. No one had been closer to him, better able to observe and report his movements, than  _Anna_. But she _couldn't_ have.

No more than Blake could intentionally fake his mark. For all Avon suggested that Blake manipulated people, he knew Blake would never consciously do this to him. What Avon found most consistently enraging about Blake was how overridingly important his goals and principles were to him. Those very principles made Blake's active participation in something like this unthinkable. If Blake had been altered, he didn't know it.  Neither did he press, or even indicate he was aware of, his advantage. Blake didn’t know they were matched, or that they at least seemed to be.

Avon watched carefully, and it quickly became obvious that Blake’s mark--might be real. There was a ready affinity between them, and, when there wasn't, an intense, personal antipathy. He'd felt it even before he'd seen Blake without his shirt, recovering after returning from Cygnus Alpha, and had seen a mark on Blake’s arm identical to his own. Blake had saved him over the Decimas, or argued with him, or let his lip quirk in amusement, like everything that was going on was a joke shared between them, and Avon thought, yes, it's not at all unlikely. But then if their coming together  _had_  been arranged, it hadn't been a plan made by a fool. If he and Blake had been psychologically incompatible, the ruse would have fallen apart quickly. So he shouldn't be surprised, then, that he and Blake--made sense. If there was a plan, then his willingness to entertain the idea that Blake’s mark might be real would have to be part of it.

It was tempting to say that he’d somehow been mistaken in Anna. Tempting to simply decide that this vital, living man he wanted was the person he owed himself to, and that all the guilt of the past should be washed away. False Anna could then be forgotten––not simply for not having been his markmate but for whatever treachery had compelled her to counterfeit the state. How tempting that idea was kept Avon from readily believing it. And there again, how could he think it? Even for a moment? Of  _her?_  Suspecting Anna was torment. This disloyalty to her memory made him despise himself.

Acquiring Orac gave Avon a way to break the stalemate. Once the danger attendant on Orac’s initial prophecy had passed, Avon began using the computer for private research. He called up early photos of Blake, his interrogation records, whether those early photos had been doctored--and everything about Anna's record, as well as everything he'd already been intending to look into about the matter of her death.

Avon was a little surprised when, after two weeks of near constant work, whenever he could be spared from his normal duties, Blake himself knocked on Avon’s door. Glancing around the room, Avon winced and went out to meet Blake in the hall.

"I'm busy, Blake," he said tiredly. 

"Oh yes," Blake agreed. "You've been busy for two weeks, ever since we got free of the System. We’ve barely seen you. What are you up to?"

"Nothing that will impair your work. If you need Orac, I'll bring it out to you. I suppose I need a sleep cycle anyway."

"You need a dozen of them. You look half-dead."

Avon smiled enigmatically. Perhaps he was half-dead—half with Anna and half with Blake. "I couldn't resist. I cannot stand a mystery."

"Me neither, as it happens." Blake started for the door, and Avon caught his arm.

"Don't go in there. You won't like it."

"Why won't I like it, Avon? What has it got to do with me?"

Avon laughed at Blake's strange ability to cut to the heart of it. "Well, precisely."

Blake gave him an evaluative look. "I'm going in," he announced. "And if I really haven't any right to know, if you really think I can't help, you'll stop me." He turned.

"Blake--" Avon arrested him with a word, and Blake turned his head, waiting.

"Give me a reason," Blake said. 

"I can’t." Avon shook his head. "I'm tired. I've been tired for a year. I can’t solve this on my own, either because I can’t  _see_  it or because I am too intimately concerned, and my perspective is irrevocably compromised. And I have known all along how you would hate--not knowing. If you'd been altered, like that. That you deserve to know, if you have been.”

Blake's posture grew more rigid. "Right," he said in a clipped tone, and walked in. Avon followed.

The room was a mess of hard-copy--piles that signified something to the room's owner.

"I somehow thought you'd be neat," Blake said wryly.

"Not when I am working," Avon said crisply, stepping into the middle of the piles. "Blake, meet Anna Grant." He indicated a photo and a rough constellation of papers. "Her past is either too neat, or slightly obscure. But before I had any criminal record, she and I were lovers. I planned to destabilize the Federation banking system and escape with enough money to make us rich and safe. But it went terribly wrong, and she died. I was, as you perhaps would not expect, wracked with guilt."

"You're wrong," Blake murmured. "That's exactly what I'd expect."

"You know me so well," Avon said in an ironic tone. "That, of course, complicates the issue. Because Anna was my mark-mate, Blake." He watched carefully for a reaction there, but Blake didn't betray any. Blake, Avon sometimes thought, was actually better at hiding his feelings, when he really wanted to, than he himself was.

"And, of course," Avon rolled up his sleeve, "so are you. I'd introduce you to the second pile, but I expect you're already acquainted. Subject Two has undergone extensive mental and physical torture, and thus what he remembers of his past is inherently suspect, even though he now believes himself to be in full possession of his own history."

"Either Anna was mistaken, then, or I am," Blake said in a very calm voice. Avon wondered if he were being gentled, in this fragile state, like a runaway horse—but couldn't quite summon up the energy to resent it. Blake often knew how to manage him. Perhaps he did need this.

"'Mistaken'," Avon smiled, "or practicing an elaborate deception, possibly against one of your wills. There are of course cases of multiple bonds, but only if you have a certain, specific type of mark. I-- _we_ \--do not." 

Blake looked around the room. "I'll help. I can hardly be objective, of course."

"Whereas I have kept perfectly calm and been reasonable about the entire affair," Avon deadpanned, and Blake laughed. "In what direction are you non-objective?" Avon asked, sitting down cross-legged in the paper.

Blake knelt as well, next to a pile of photographs of Avon and Anna together. Surveillance shots of him looking at Anna something like he looked at Blake. Grinning at her, frowning at her with thoughtful concentration. A few less-revealing proper portrait shots of Anna, of himself. A time in his life when Blake had not existed. Avon wondered if it hurt Blake to look at them, to think about Avon having had another life with someone else. He knew it would hurt him, if he were asked to do the reverse.

"Rather an unfair question,” Blake answered, looking up from the photos at Avon, still without any expression on his own face. “If I were to say, ‘in yours’, to indicate that I hope I’m right, hope that I haven’t been altered in that way, and that you and I are matched--then suppose you discovered  _I_  was the false-positive? I'd be exposed, and you'd feel nothing but vindication."

"No--that's not right. I’d accept that it wasn’t your intention or your fault. And obviously I must feel something for you, since I am seriously entertaining the possibility you might be mine against the memory of loss.”

Avon was exhausted and at his limits. He didn’t want to hurt Blake, and he was doing nothing but that. He couldn’t bring himself to do it more, over lies and misdirections—not when the truth promised to be painful enough for them both. He wouldn’t have lied to Anna, nor would he have concealed something like this and lied by omission. Looking at Blake next to the photos of her, Avon felt the injustice of not giving Blake what he tried to give him elsewhere, what he’d considered Anna’s by right—his unflinching honesty. To get through this, Blake would need all the facts. No declarations, just the parameters of the situation. He would need to understand what was keeping Avon from solving this. To know that a part of the problem was Blake himself.

Blake’s gaze on him grew heavier, and Avon wanted to be borne down with the weight of it, to sleep in his arms or be fucked into the ground. "And that won't evaporate, when you find your answer?" 

"No." Avon looked back at him, gaze steady—almost hard with resolve. He knew that when he and Blake settled this, when Avon finally put Anna and his doubt to bed, that they would have to do something about the fact that, whether or not they were matched, Blake cared for him, and that the reverse was certainly also true. The knowledge twisted between them, and the space in which they weren’t touching ached. They were going to address it, that much had been said, decided. But not—just now. Now, they needed to sift evidence. To probe the wound and determine what set of problems they’d need to surmount to be with one another. Avon handed Blake the list of suppositions--reasons Anna might have lied.

It was easier, with a second and fresh pair of eyes. Blake was willing to suppose things of Anna that Avon had balked at, or to at least entertain their possibility. Avon had done all the ground work, but it took Blake to synthesize an answer. It was not unlike how they worked on missions, when they were both committed to a given project.

"Do you want to sleep?" Avon asked after a few hours.

Blake shook his head, called Vila and asked to switch watches with him. "Let's settle this," he said briskly, underlying need and urgency humming in his voice, like he was talking about a mission he felt was vital. Avon smirked because he and Blake were equally capable of pressing on past sensible stopping points, equally desperate to solve puzzles. Equally invested in this.

Another few hours, and Blake set his papers down.

"Avon--I think she was Central Security." Blake grabbed a pen and traced out a diagram on the back of a piece of paper. Avon listened carefully, trying not to want to _stab_  Blake for saying it, trying not to be sick or to loose himself to the threatening wave of numbness that would make him push Blake away when that wasn’t what he wanted. Trying not to feel a swell of ecstatic relief and release. It was a convincing enough argument.

"Then I have been a fool, and now you know it."

Blake shook his head. "You might as well say it was foolish to  _allow_  a doctor's treatment to work on you. That's what this is, Avon. Professional work. None of us is totally in control of our minds, no matter how resolved we are on that score. I know that better than anyone." 

"What about the  _London_  passengers? Am I being paranoid?" Blake opened his mouth with an automatic rejoinder, so Avon put in, "More so than usual. More than _reasonably_  so, by my definition, not yours."

Blake shook his head. "I don't know, Avon. It's a lot of luck. I've thought it too. But then they couldn't have fathomed we'd take _Liberator_."

"No."

"And our actual breakout plan didn't work, after all."

"Thanks to you."

"Yes."

"But they might have thought you'd manage something, got us out another way. What if both marks are false? What if _I've_  been altered? I might have been, and if I had, I wouldn’t necessarily remember that."

Blake pointed towards another sheet of paper. "Orac thinks we're both in the clear. Besides, the prisoner manifest might also have been interfered with without either of our marks being altered, or even known and weighed. One doesn’t necessarily imply the other. As far as the marks themselves go, I think we've reached as much of a conclusion as we're ever going to find. Do you not want it to be true?" Blake asked, his voice even.

"No," Avon said, feeling more exhausted than ever now that the charm was wound up. "That isn't the problem. Rather the reverse. I want it to be true, and so I cannot believe that it is. How are you going to feel when you win?"

"I won't believe it either," Blake answered. " _When_  we win?"

Avon shrugged. "It seems I might as well start hoping."

Blake laid down beside him in the mess of papers, drawing Avon down with him. A mattress of clean, clinical sheets detailing Blake's torture sessions and Avon's worst mistakes. A cloud of awful secrets, exposed. Trust Blake to use all that as a bed to bear them, unafraid and unashamed. At last, Avon thought, sinking gladly.

Avon reached for him, and Blake caught his hand. "You're far too far gone for anything sexual. You're over-wrought and you've worked yourself to the bone. I've wanted this too long to want to start things off without a little ceremony. When did you eat last?"

Avon found he couldn't actually remember. Blake rolled his eyes at the telling silence. "Like  _you_  are any better," Avon snapped. 

"Program Zen with regular reminders for us to have something, then," Blake suggested. It wasn't a bad idea, actually.

"I'll have to sleep here," Avon muttered. "The bed is altogether too far away."

"Have you always been melodramatic?"

Avon smirked. "Since childhood."

“And I can imagine your temper tantrums _so clearly_  for some reason," Blake huffed, pulling Avon up and half dragging him to the bed. Avon helped with some fitful staggering. They got as far as boots and jackets, and Blake slumped down too.

"I'm sleeping here," Blake announced, pulling Avon to him like it was his right. Avon supposed it was. 

"Are you?" Avon asked, not minding, but there was the form of the thing to consider. Just because he belonged to Blake slightly more officially than he had yesterday didn’t mean Blake should expect to get away with anything.

"Yes. My cabin's too far away, and  _I_ haven’t exactly had enough sleep these past weeks either. Up worrying about you, actually. I suppose we'll have intense emotional reactions to all this in the morning, when we have any energy and emotional wherewithal to have them with."

"And sex." 

Blake smiled into his hair, and Avon felt the movement of his lips, like the kiss he’d not yet known. "That too."

Blake was a little wrong, Avon thought as Blake drifted (and he snored--of course he did). Avon was already experiencing a fairly intense sense of contentment. The bitter recriminations over Anna and the panic and exultation over Blake were no doubt lying in wait for him in the morning, as Blake had suggested. But in the moment, Avon wasn't numb to that low, abiding satisfaction. The mystery solved, the answer right. Blake. Well, of course it was. As should have been obvious from the start. As had been, really, underneath his complicating, cross-purposed layers of hope and fear.


	19. Desperate Romantic

**Desperate Romantic**

Out of the hours of questioning, meaningful patterns slowly coalesced. There were a lot of red herrings, but it seemed what they actually wanted to know about was his movements, the people he knew, and whether he was political. Specifically, whether he'd been _involved_ in anything political. It was very lucky that they were interested in this, rather than the many and varied illegal acts Avon had contemplated since he’d been assigned to a systems analyst position at the Federation Central bank. Guarded as he was, he might have slipped and given himself away there. His few associations and his politics he could speak of with real honesty. Oh, he'd have to conceal that he didn't _like_ the government--but not many clever people did, and its functionaries seemed to accept and expect this. If he were found out there, it wouldn’t mean anything. He hadn't said or done anything about his distaste, and that was what counted.

At long last, a matronly woman came in. _Good cop_ , Avon thought wryly. When the woman began to speak, it was with a fussy faux-concern. Avon remembered one of his mothers insisting on reading him _Harry Potter_ books as a child, even though they were ancient and banned. She‘d said they'd teach him a lot about people, and she'd been right, insofar as Avon knew and distrusted an Umbridge when he saw one. He let his expression go cordial, and made an effort to look relieved by her arrival. He hoped the pretense would convince her that the two of them could talk, surely. One sensible, middle-class person who didn't want to make trouble to another.

"Well, it's clear now you don't have anything to do with it.” The woman patted his arm.

Avon smiled. "With what? I'm afraid I still don't know!" He laughed, as though bemused (that, at least, was true), and she shook her head.

"Of course you don't! I'm so sorry we had to bring you in at all--but that _is_ policy. I just have a few, teensy final questions to run by you."

"Of course.” Avon nodded, keeping how much he despised the word 'teensy' to himself. "Anything I can do to help! Besides, I'd like to go home--I've been here some time, and I have work in the morning." He tried a sheepish smile, and felt like his face was curdling.

"Oh don't worry, we've canceled your shift," she cooed. Avon kept his expression fixed even as he thought _Because, of course, you might have wanted time to mind wipe or kill me, and time to hush it up--to make it look like a suicide, if necessary._

"You can have all tomorrow to relax and recover. Now," the woman said briskly, bringing up a photo on a large monitor with a handheld device and watching Avon’s face intently--the interrogation was, Avon suspected, nothing like at an end. Perhaps they were only now coming to the real questions. "Do you know this man?"

A black and white static image. Handsome, actually. Curly hair. Generous mouth.

"Should I?"

"In a sense," the woman said, clicking through to a vizclip, which began to play. This one was in full color, and accompanied by sound. The man was speaking fervently. He seemed to be at some sort of rally against suppression drugs in the food supply, which Avon detested the thought of and dodged as much as was possible by eating at home or in restaurants rather than using the subsidized public canteens, hating that he couldn't totally avoid the atmospheric contagion. 'For everyone's peace of mind and well being', they said. Well, _Avon_ _’s_ peace of mind would have been greatly increased by a total absence of pacification drugs in his system, thank you all the same.

The man in the clip had a curiously appealing, rolling voice. What he was saying was--incautious, but neither incorrect nor unintelligent. The speaker was getting angry, now. His eyes flashed, and his voice grew harsh. He brought his clenched fist down on the podium. Then, suddenly, his mood shifted—was the turn staged or real, Avon wondered?—and he was sardonic and controlled. Avon’s gaze was drawn to the wry, easy twist at the corner of the speaker’s mouth. The man was bathed in confidence, in certainty. Even at this remove he radiated charisma. Avon had a strange and sudden feeling that the speaker was the most-- _complete_ person he had ever seen. Like a world in one man. A suspicion began to form in Avon’s mind. He shifted, uncomfortable.

His interrogator clicked the sound off. "I regret to say that this is the leader of the Freedom Party, recently taken into protective custody. His name is Roj Blake."

A cold shudder of confirmation ran through Avon. "Ah."

"And you don't know him, at all?"

"No--we never met. I certainly wouldn't get caught up in a thing like that--" Avon gestured at the still playing, now silent footage of the rally. Carefully, he didn't look at the image of Roj Blake, or touch Blake's name on his arm. "I've always had an exemplary record."

"High-achieving and free from trouble.” His inquisitor smiled at him. "That's the way to do it, Kerr."

Oh, he _hated_ platitudes, and he _despised_ being called 'Kerr' by anyone but his mothers. Avon smiled again, to keep from sneering—the too-often-repeated gesture making his face hurt, at this point. "I do my best."

"And it's a very good best! We're so happy not to have to lose you, that you're not involved."

 _Lose me?_ Avon didn't say. Executing someone for political crimes of this sort was, of course, technically illegal. Either she’d slipped, or he was being blatantly threatened.

"It's a pity about Roj. A fine mind, as good as yours, but bent to such perfidy! _Such_ a waste _._ ” She shook her head.

Avon wanted to tell her not to call the man her people had arrested _Roj_ , but held that back, too. He darted a glance back at the screen. It was showing surveillance footage now. Roj Blake at dinner with friends, smiling. A silent laugh. His sleeves rolled up slightly, just at the cuffs. A clearly-visible K above his wrist. Avon didn’t let his breath catch.

Avon snapped his head back and injected a bit of horror into his voice. "Goodness, I hate to think of myself being connected to a dissident. What did he _do?_ "

She gave him a pitying look. Fake, naturally. "I'm sorry to say it'll be all over the news tomorrow, so I think it'd be kinder if I told you now. He and his accomplices tried to bomb an entire dome. We barely caught them. You see now why we had to bring you in?"

"How awful! But it's so very stupid!" Avon said, injecting some real heat.

What she’d said didn't accord with what he'd heard about the Freedom Party, and everyone had heard something. They'd probably only been bombing a military installation, rather than civilians—but the fact that they'd been doing it in the first place, and gotten caught, was, indeed, quite stupid. Avon could have told Blake that remote detonation was much safer, and not at all difficult to pull off, if you put a bit of planning into it. And had Blake been using a reliable security look out? Evidently not. Idiotic.

"That's right!" the interrogator agreed, picking up on his enthusiasm. "I'm so sorry--it's a hard blow, when you find out your mark mate's not all you might wish. And to find out in such a way--" she shook her head.“You might want to wear long-sleeves from now on.”

"I'm glad I have a day off to adjust," Avon said, thinking _If the Federation didn't ban public registries and code census data so aggressively that even I can't break into it, I wouldn't have been in this position--I'd have told him about where his politics would lead, or at least about better bombs, when we were children._

"You poor boy.” She shook her head, as Avon thought _For god's sake, I'm over thirty._ "Bad luck."

"Oh," Avon said bravely, "I'll push on."

"That's the spirit!"

She led him out of the cell, and Avon carefully observed the layout of the building.

On the way back to his own apartment, he considered his options.

Roj Blake wasn't everyone's personal ideal, but he was Avon's. That much was already obvious and was, after all, the entire point. Blake's passion and his magnetism and the way he laughed. Avon couldn't watch him for thirty seconds without thinking _That, yes,_ that _._ That's _mine, and it_ _’_ _s been denied me all my life, and no one's taking it from me without my permission. Which I am not inclined to give._

It was an insane risk--but was Avon (hand-reared on stories of people making the right decisions to save people they cared about and being rewarded) really going to let the man his soul was bound to be mind-wiped and/or executed before they'd even been introduced, let alone had sex? Was he really going to let the holy grail (which even his mother's story books had never offered him), an interesting protagonist, go without a whisper of dissent?

What was here for him, if he stayed? The grinding lack of freedom and resources that was making him seriously consider his own crimes against the state. A lifetime of being carefully watched, as Blake's name-mate, and thus an inherently suspect character. Being 'high-achieving and free from trouble’. Earning the limited, patronizing approval of people like _that_. A life of lesser loves, having squandered the possibility of a grand passion that could shatter his resistance. The possibility of purpose and vocation and challenge.

And in exchange for that sad and slender safety, he’d have to let Blake, an obviously good man, and _his_ , die. Oh, no. They’d have to do better than that.

Few people would have said it, but Kerr Avon was a desperate romantic at heart. The plan that had occurred to him back in the interrogation facility wasn't safe--it was sheer madness.

Roj Blake had better be worth it.

Back in his own apartment, Avon dismantled the surveillance devices that had been installed while he was out. He made quick work of packing up his essential belongings, of which there were few. He looked up the layout of the base he'd just been held in, collected the equipment he would need to infiltrate it, and contacted a free trader and arranged for departure from Earth in six hours. He dropped off his bags with Captain Stannis, who took a look at his gear and chose not to ask awkward questions.

"Good luck," she said wryly. Avon appreciated the gesture--but hopefully, he wouldn't need it. He had a little preparation and fate on his side.

He strongly suspected Blake was being held in the same facility he had been in. The interrogators might have wanted to use the two of them against each other, if it had turned out they'd met and were lovers or confidants. To do so, they would have needed Blake close at hand. Avon further suspected that Blake hadn't been moved yet. Mind wipes were a serious technical business, like the old voodoo science of anesthesiology. They'd want to thoroughly interrogate him, and then wait until the professionals came in to get started on wiping him--that is, until morning.

Breaking into the facility and stealing a change of clothing was a glamorous way of saying 'coming in through the access tunnels during a shift change and taking a just-discarded uniform and access pad out of a locker with a laughably simplistic computerized entry lock'. A duty roster told him which cells were occupied that night. He picked the one nearest to his own recent abode. Sure enough, he found Blake, beaten and unconscious. He didn’t let himself feel wonder or anger or fear. None of that was needed, now—it would only interfere with the task at hand. All of that could wait for if they survived. Still he caught himself darting glances at the sleeping man. Each one felt illicit, stolen, and settled heavily in his stomach. The K visible at Blake’s cuff made his heart clench. It could _wait_.

Now disguised as an orderly, Avon took a cart from the supply room, as though he’d every right to be there. He returned to Blake's cell and wheeled him off for treatment--to clean him up for the morning's operations, Avon said when stopped and questioned. The fact that he knew about the plan for the next day satisfied a guard who didn't recognize him.

Avon wheeled the cart down into the maintenance levels, stripped off his stolen uniform, slapped an adrenal pad on Blake. It was enough to get him moving, though not enough to return him properly to consciousness and sensibility (presuming he had ever been sensible to begin with). Then, to all appearances, Avon helped his staggering, blind drunk friend home. He took a route through the Delta zones.

"I hope you have medical supplies," he wheezed to Stannis when their long trip across the city was complete. Blake was heavier than Avon's romantic imaginations had led him to expect, and Avon had had to support him extensively.

"Isn't that Roj Blake, the terrorist who's been all over the news tonight?" Stannis asked. Avon gave her a look. "Isn't that a strange, drunk friend I've never heard of?" she corrected herself.

He grinned at her. "You and I are going to get along well, Stannis."

"Oh I think so, Avon."

His face twitched. "I didn't give you my name."

She looked up from Blake's arm. "You headed out of here with quite specific equipment. According to the reports all his people got taken, you don't look like his brother, and you're doing rather a lot for him to simply be a concerned citizen. It wasn’t difficult. Let’s get going."

Avon breathed out when he realized she wasn’t going to turn them in or threaten to raise her prices. Honor amongst thieves, he supposed. Or perhaps Captain Stannis wasn't entirely unromantic herself.

She slipped the Earth security net and Avon watched, asking her some technical questions about the program that had allowed her to do it. "I think I can improve on that," he told her when he properly understood the way it worked.

"Lobbying to stick around?"

"Keeping my options open."

When they'd cleared the system, Stannis turned the automatics on and went for a rest period. She asked if Avon wanted to take one as well.

"I have to stay up and explain what’s happened to him, when he comes around," Avon pointed out.

He'd treated Blake and cleaned him up to the best of his ability, but Blake’s ribs were cracked. They'd need to find a real doctor soon. Medipads would cut the pain, and the interrogators knew their business and had probably been careful not to seriously injure Blake, but the last thing Avon needed was something healing wrong or an infection setting in, Blake dying on him (and before they’d even had a chance to get to know one another).

Avon took Stannis’s seat, watched the indicators, and tried to think of how one went about finding a doctor when one was on the run. Stannis would know. Money would help. It usually did. Avon had managed to cycle his accounts off through a series of dummies--some of them would be caught, but Avon was probably still a man of some resources. He'd always known his skills could earn him more, off Earth, anyway—perhaps the Federation had done him a favor, forcing him to run. His parents had managed to emigrate to a frontier world, and from thence to a neutral planet, but Avon’s computer clearance (he was categorized as a non-expendable high-skill citizen with access to trade and security secrets, and thus his ability to live and work where he’d liked had been highly restricted almost since he’d taken his degree) had always barred him from that possibility. Legally, anyway.

A low moan made Avon whip his head towards the occupant of the other seat. Blake came around slowly. Avon got up, poured him a cup of water, and handed it to him, sitting back down.

"You're on a shuttle," Avon explained. The adrenaline was leaving him, and he was suddenly quite tired. "Heading away from Earth. You are, I believe, the only survivor of the raid on your group."

"I remember that much," Blake said, groggy, with a lingering shadow of cold anger falling over his voice. He took a drink. “Thank you.”

"I'm not political," Avon said, seemingly out of nowhere. "But I am open to persuasion."

Blake blinked at him. He must be piecing together that statement and the fact that he was no longer in a cell, but instead headed to the outer planetary systems. He drained and put down his cup.

A strangely tender smile settled on his face. "Hello, Avon. I've been waiting quite awhile to meet you. All my life, in fact."

It should have been a sentimental cliché. When Blake said it, it wasn’t. "I'm famous in my field, which I _thought_ might have gotten my name into circulation," Avon said tartly.

Blake could only grin harder at him. "I'm sorry--I was a bit preoccupied with my own endeavors."

Avon rolled his eyes.

"You must be excessively resourceful and brave, to have managed to do this for me," Blake said, still looking at him in a way Avon found both uncomfortably intense and pleasurable. “Thank you.”

"I'm not brave. It was simple necessary.” He almost didn’t continue, but found he couldn’t help himself. “A question of quality of life,” Avon explained. “Having found you, I was unwilling to let you go."

"You're not quibbling with 'resourceful', I notice."

Avon smirked. "Well--I've rather outdone myself today, haven't I?"

Blake laughed, and it sounded as good as it had looked. "Modest, too. How can I repay your efforts?"

" _That_ is a particularly weak come-on."

"Do you want to wait around while I think of a better one?"

"Not really," Avon admitted, letting Blake kiss him.


	20. You Really Do Hate Me

**You Really Do Hate Me**

 

Avon's expression gave him away.

“But you already know this," Blake said, his tone losing its heartbreaking hint of awe as he realized something was wrong, and what it was. "Or at least, you suspected it."

Avon had known, actually. Not that it mattered much either way. At first he'd only suspected that he and Blake were matched, but then he'd _had_ to determine the nature of his problem. He’d tortured himself with the idea that it might _not_ be true, only to not act on it when he knew that it was.

Blake laughed--not pleasantly. "I came to your cabin to tell you what I thought might be good news. But I was mistaken, of course. It’s _not_ good news to you – it’s not even news. You didn't want me getting involved, and so you didn't tell me. You hate me this much. And this--makes you despise me all the more, I suppose?”

Avon didn't answer. Couldn't.

"Right," Blake said, controlled fury in his voice, turning to go. "If you don't want to talk about it, then we--"

Like Lot's wife, he couldn't help casting a last glance over his shoulder as he left the site of destruction behind him.

"--won't," Blake finished. He stopped. Avon, seated in a swivel chair at his desk, was looking after him, and Avon winced because whatever it was, the look on his face had been enough to throw off Blake in a towering rage, to deflect his decided purpose. Avon knew from experience what that took, and was afraid of the degree to which he must be exposing himself. "No," Blake decided, taking a few steps back into the room, as though drifting involuntarily towards Avon. "There's something else. Avon. Tell me what it is."

Avon looked away, down at his hands. He'd been working, a moment ago. A project for Blake. He’d still have time to finish it, and he had better make it good, because it was probably the last.

"There is nothing else."

Blake took a deep breath. "I'm as angry with you as I've ever been. I'm almost as _angry_ as I've ever been. I was going to let it go, because if you really felt that way, then I suppose there would be nothing for us to say to one another. Nothing of any use, at least. That’s your prerogative; I haven’t any right to you, not if you don’t want me to have it. But there's something else going on, and I deserve to know. Before you take _this_ from me, I'd like to know why."

“I have no intention of discussing it," Avon said tightly.

"Tell me you hate me yourself, then. Don't let me do it for you."

"I hate you," Avon said, flat and automatic. _Go away,_ he silently begged Blake. _Go_.

Blake took a step forward, leaning over him. Avon shut his eyes. Blake's tone was clipped with rage, trembling with it. "Mean it, Avon. Say it properly."

Avon took a hard breath. "Sometimes," he said, very precisely, "I _hate_ you."

"Enough to _despise_ the idea that we're connected?" Blake asked, watching him carefully. "More than you feel _anything_ else? Enough to dismiss the prospect without entertaining it for a moment? Enough to throw away your own mark, and deny me mine?"

The phrase 'deny me mine' ripped Avon's eyes open, and he couldn't quite bury a roil of sharp want before he quickly closed them again. Blake was standing very near him, and Avon kept his body rigid so he didn't lean into Blake, as he usually did when they were close.

"As so often happens, there are problems you've not thought through,”he said.

"And which you have, as usual," Blake snapped. “Well, let's hear them, then. Tell me what an idiot I’m being this time. You do so enjoy it."

Avon opened his eyes to protest that that wasn't fair, but swallowed the correction. Blake didn’t need the truth about this. Not a scrap of it. And Avon couldn’t afford to care what Blake thought of him. More than that was at stake. "I don't want this," he said instead.

He could hear Blake's breathing get harsh, and then heard Blake push it back under control. Obscurely, Avon was proud of him. It was a little impressive to have a temper like that, to care that much. It was more impressive still to be in control of it, and Blake, for the most part, was.

Blake straightened up, and Avon hated that he wanted him to come back. "Specify your reasons,” Blake said.

Avon wanted to laugh. Blake was trying to catch him out by mirroring how he himself would have asked the question--almost translating it for him. Avon supposed he _would_ have to say, after all.

But Blake wasn't going to like it. He was going to try and argue the point, and he was going to find Avon's resistance unacceptable. He might not be able to live with Avon, afterwards. Avon might not be able to stay, in the face of Blake's persistence. The whole time he'd known Blake, he'd been testing his luck, and now it had run quite through. If they really had to talk about this, then their time together was probably at an end. That would be unbearable. He wouldn't be able, if he left, to help Blake, to be with him in a limited capacity, or to simultaneously entice and torture himself with the prospect of having more. Leaving would probably be a welcome respite for Avon's sanity, but it didn't feel like one. It felt rather like the world was ending.

Blake was getting impatient. His hand was tightening on the back of Avon's chair, like he wanted to wring Avon's neck and this would have to do in its stead. Avon shoved away a moment's desire to brush his fingers over Blake’s white knuckles.

"You are going to dismiss this,” Avon said, “or not trust that it is actually how I interpret the situation--but I'm not going to be moved on this point, and it is how I feel."

"All right," Blake snapped, throwing himself down to sit on Avon’s bed, across from the chair, which Avon spun to face him. "Then _say_ it.”

Well. This was it, then. It would perhaps have helped if Blake wasn’t glaring at him with simmering anger while simultaneously looking hurt, turning large, sensitive eyes on Avon. Both states brought out in Avon particular urges to kiss it better. Of course Blake had thrown on his best jacket before coming, a compliment Avon was sensible of. Stupidly touched by. Of _course_ they’d have to do this with Blake looking devastatingly attractive, looking like he so wanted to crumple into forgiveness and sex that a slight push or the hint of an apology from Avon would have had him toppling back on Avon’s bed.

"You are committed to something you would say is higher than yourself. You are genuinely, absolutely moral,” Avon began.

Blake snorted. “I’m hardly—“

“ _Shut up_. Your few mistakes in that regard, you have ruthlessly corrected. They were the result of debates as to how to achieve moral aims in an immoral world, questions of logistics, rather than actual instances of deviation from your defined values. You worry about idiotic things--whether _you_ will become corrupted, if you are given any power. As though that is particularly plausible.”

If Blake had wanted power for himself, he’d gone about it in the worst possible way. The Federation had a few routes to the top, and Blake, ideally positioned for several, had actively spurned them all. Blake ran the _Liberator_ on charisma, never having thought to establish more formal discipline. Any given military squad and most of the illegal outfits they’d run across offered the participants less room for meaningful dissent than Blake did. Blake had never tried to integrate them with a more disciplined rebel group like Avalon’s, apparently preferring this way of doing things, exhausting and fundamentally dependent on earning and keeping the good will of often difficult people as it was. On a larger political scale, Blake believed in interplanetary independence and willing association rather than reforming strong federal control itself. He had somehow actually deluded himself into believing he _wouldn_ _’_ _t_ have to be President if they won-- _that_ was how little he yearned to rule the universe. And even if he had wanted to rule, rather than simply wanted things to be run correctly, Blake’s most tyrannical benevolent dictatorship would have been the least functionally oppressive human government in centuries.

“And still,” Avon said with a smile that he intended to be unpleasant, but which he was afraid might have had a glimmer of fondness in it, “you find a way to fret over it. You're so good-humored that even your worst moods and your miscalculations are readily forgiven by the people who love you. And they do love you--everyone you bring into your orbit does. Easily.” The smile turned self-deprecating, and any gentleness drained from it. “And what am I, Blake?"

"The man _I_ love," Blake said, quietly, his hands laced together in his lap. Looking straight at him.

It stabbed at Avon. He had never believed souls were real, attributing the mark to some less mystical affinity. But for some time now he’d known they must be, because Blake very clearly had a soul. Whatever he did, he'd have Blake's mark. He felt somewhat proud of that, even though he knew he shouldn’t. The fact of its presence on him seemed to indicate that Avon had earned it. But he hadn't, and Blake certainly didn't deserve him.

"Wrong answer,” Avon said harshly. “I am the person you _believe_ you are supposed to be with because we have similar patterns of skin pigmentation. I am not a leader of masses. I am not _good_ _._ Ethical decisions do not come easily to me, and once I have decided on something I am firm on it, without reference to a universal calculation of what is best for everyone. I am acerbic even when I don't mean to be, and I have long since given up not meaning to be. I don't want to be gentled or tamed because, you see, there is nothing underneath the unappealing surface. I don't have some hidden, better personality you can release. Everything I am, you've seen. In anything but my current capacity, I am a detriment to the cause that means everything to you, and which I--grudgingly intellectually respect, and am willing to forward, for its own sake and for yours.”

Blake looked like it pained him to hear it, though he must acknowledge that it was perfectly true. His mouth opened to contradict Avon, and Avon had to push on, fast.

“I am also a liability to you,” Avon continued mercilessly, propping his elbows on his knees and knitting his hands under his chin. Looking at Blake’s neck rather than his eyes. “I must reflect poorly on you, in the eyes of your contacts and supporters.”

“Is that all?” Blake asked steadily, clearly willing the recital over.

Avon smiled grimly. “That is the least of it. The worst is what I would do to _you_ , Blake. I will inevitably scratch away at your good humor, and manage to hurt you. I will take what I admire in you and soil it. It is what I am good at. My last lover is dead, because she trusted me. I don't want to do that again, to anyone. You cannot make me do it, in the name of getting your due or because you have some optimistic delusions about reforming me. If you can forget this happened, we can continue to work together as we do now—at arm's length. You can of course seek any gratification you need… elsewhere. Have a lover on board, get married, for all I care,” Avon said around the tightness of his throat. “That would probably be for the best.”

Avon straightened up, sitting back in his chair. Shifting the discussion onto more practical grounds.

“If you accept the facts I have laid before you and my position, I can stay aboard the _Liberator_. We need never speak of this again. That is what I would prefer. If you do not accept them, I have a list of bolt holes. As well you know. That is, after all, the sort of person I am."

"I don't accept them," Blake said.

Avon felt a little sick. Banishment it was, then.

"And you're not leaving,” Blake continued, and Avon’s heart sank further. Ah, he should have expected this. That Blake would force him to fight for something he didn’t want, but which was necessary. The worst of all possible worlds.

"What are you going to do, force me to stay?" Avon said. Blake had balked at that before. He won't be able to carry through with it. All Avon would have to do was look pathetically at Blake and tell him it was what he truly wanted, and Blake would crumble. Some tyrant. Better for Blake to give it up now, and save them both the trouble.

"Now you're just lashing out in panic," Blake said reasonably. "Of course I'm not going to 'force you to stay’, I’m going to convince you. Besides, Avon, imagine _you_ as a sex slave. You'd have the collar rewired to kill whoever touched you in under a minute. Or if that didn't work, you'd just say caustic things about your captor's erection and the quality of his torture. As reasonably as you'd respond to that melodramatic scenario, that is how unreasonably you’re responding to this very quite resolvable situation."

Avon blinked. ”I'm sorry––I’ve just told you things I've been concealing from you for months, laid bare the ultimately incompatibility of our characters, and told you why you and I can never be together, and you think it's _something to joke about?_ ”

Avon felt a sudden, totally unexpected pain, and a blaze of anger. He hadn’t expected that Blake wouldn’t take this seriously. If Blake was flippant, if he saw no reason for them not to indulge in some emotionless sex despite all this—if he thought Avon’s deep consideration and obnoxiously profound love for him meant _nothing_ —

Blake smiled. It was warm and confident, rather than glib. "Good. Now you're about as angry as I was a few minutes ago, when the man I'm in love with dismissed the most important relationship of my life as a fantasy predicated on erratic skin pigmentation and literally tried to tell me he 'wasn't good enough for me’. The most complicated man I've ever known, a man who has saved my life a dozen times, at great risk to himself--the trouble-shooting, pragmatic, brilliant core of my entire operation, who is desperately sorry about having allowed his last lover to come to harm, tried to tell me, for the most stupidly noble of reasons, that we could never be together because he had no personality to speak of, was immoral, was bad for my work, and devoid of honor.”

Blake was ticking off points with his fingers.

“That’s not—” Avon rushed in.

“My turn for a monologue, I think.” Blake forestalled him smoothly. “You suggested I _sleep_ with other people. Avon, I can't see a surer way of making everyone involved howlingly unhappy. I _talk_ during sex, for god's sake. Whoever I slept with would have to be very comfortable answering to your name. Then you suggested I had to agree to your interpretation of the facts, or you'd leave. Obviously I'm not going to agree, and it's not _safe_ for you to leave. We both know that. Besides, even if it was, you'd hear about some decision I'd made in your absence and send Orac a message about what an idiot I was, demanding to be picked up so you could lecture me in person. And you said all of this to me, the least likely person you know to accept an ultimatum.

“You don't want to go. You don't want to make the both of us miserable. You want—you have wanted since you first saw my mark—to let me tell you how wonderful _I_ think _you_ are, preferably over the course of sex. During which, as I mentioned, I tend to talk a lot. So that would work out very well for both of us.”

"Not quite," Avon said before he could stop himself, even as he resented Blake’s breezy claims to know what he was thinking. Blake raised an eyebrow. "I wanted it before I found out we matched. But everything I said remains—"

Blake laughed, so gently that Avon couldn’t find it in him to be insulted. Blake's eyes were bright, and his expression outrightly fond. Blake was looking at him like a lover, and Avon found it impossible to tell him to stop. "Avon. If you're interested in flagellation, I'll happily do it for you. It's not my kink, but I suspect it'll be more comfortable than watching you do it to yourself. If you want to be punished for some imaginary crime, let me think for a minute about how furious I am that my mark mate insulted himself, and demeaned our bond, and held himself off from me for—" Blake did a little maths, based on probable occasions Avon could have seen his mark, "eight months?”

"Nine," Avon corrected automatically.

Blake narrowed his eyes, leaning forward. " _Nine months—_ ah, I can feel it already, thank you—and then tried to run out on me, denying me my birthright—Oh _Avon_ , your face—You don't have a mark kink, do you?"

" _Shut up_ ," Avon hissed, for the second time that night.

“Oh, you _really_ do," Blake chuckled, unforgivably smug. He stood up and walked around, standing behind Avon's tense back, placing a hand over where Avon's mark sat, under the jacket. "That must have made all of this that much harder for you. Before we met, did you let other people play at being me? Did you pretend they were yours?"

"It's hardly unusual.” Avon took a shaky breath. “A lot of people do it."

"I didn't, as it happens." Blake said casually, leaving his hand where it was but leaning on the desk again, over Avon, looking at his profile—Avon stubbornly refused to turn towards Blake. “Oh, I've had sex, of course, but not like that. Why should I want anyone else _like that_ , when I own _you?_ "

Avon looked undone.

"Do you want to see it again?" Blake asked. "I suppose you touched yourself thinking about it. You had _nine months_ to dwell on it, after all.” Avon didn’t respond—didn’t trust himself not to tell Blake everything, every embarrassing detail, if he said anything at all. “And you’ve not seen it since,” Blake continued, voice swinging low and rough. “Show me yours."

The command pushed a surge of lust through Avon. Swallowing, still not feeling able to look at him, Avon stood, back to Blake, and stripped off his jacket. Blake only had to trace Avon’s mark with his fingers before Avon was making a sound like a snarl and a whimper and twisting around, shoving Blake to the bed. Blake found himself sitting back in the position he’d recently risen from, with Avon over him, essentially (though he wouldn’t have dared to describe it thus to Avon) in his lap.

“And you wanted to _leave_ me.” Blake snorted at the very idea.

"This isn't the sort of talking during sex I was promised," Avon said, wrestling Blake's jacket off.

“No. There. You can touch it, Avon. It's yours." He craned his torso to let Avon see, his pulse juddering at the strange new eroticism of his own body.

" _That_ ," Avon said thickly, touching Blake’s mark with slightly-shaking fingers, "is more what I had in mind."


	21. Shiny Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is a full-length fic.

**Shiny Things**

"And people with the same mark, they're soulmates. It's not inevitable that you'll find that person or anything, but it's not _that_ rare. If you find whoever that is, the two of you get together—y’know, get married and what have you."

“But not always," Cally said, a little confused by Vila's explanation.

"Generally," Blake put in with a shrug.

"There are occasional complicating factors, but broadly speaking Vila is right,” Avon observed absently from his station, looking at something on his console in dissatisfaction as he did so. “As right as he ever is, anyway.” Clearly his mind was with his task, and he was only following the conversation at a remove. He'd been working for hours, and Blake noticed he seemed pale and drawn. He thought about suggesting Avon get some rest, but felt he could take Avon’s snapped ‘I’m fine’as read.

"But the two of you are not married," Cally observed.

At that Avon did properly look up, frowning at her. "What?"

"You and Blake."

"We're not matched, Cally," Blake said, half-laughing with surprise.

Cally looked at him, confused. “Yes, you are. Unless there's something I'm missing?"

"It should be fairly straightforward," Blake said. "A royal blue circle on the back of the neck, where it meets the shoulders, with a gold tree with bare branches inside it, and on the lowest branch a—" He glanced over his shoulder at Avon, who was staring at him in shock.

"Which are you describing?" Avon insisted. "When did you see—?"

“ _Mine,_ " Blake said.

Avon forgot whatever he was working on and moved to the center of the room where Blake stood. Without a trace of sensuality, the two of them scrabbled at one another's jackets. Avon won, hissing "Let me _see_ " and getting Blake's collar down. Blake took a sharp breath when Avon’s fingers touched the mark at the back of his neck. Avon drew his hand away hastily.

"That stung a little. It’s—"

"Warm," Avon said tonelessly. "When you touch the counterpart, it's supposed to be—"

"Warm," Blake finished. "Now let me just—"

Avon didn't resist, and even turned as Blake peeled down his collar. Touching Avon’s mark, which was indeed identical to his own, actually made Blake's neck prick. “There’s transference. That confirms it." He observed the single magpie. "One for sorrow," he murmured.

Avon laughed hysterically for a moment, and suddenly slumped bonelessly. Blake had to catch him before he smacked his head on the hard back of the couch. He deposited Avon on the sofa and stepped away.

"Did he really _faint?_ " Vila asked, delighted.

Blake glared at him. "It's a shock. He was tired, and he probably hasn’t eaten since he started working. Get Gan—we need to move Avon to the medbay. A little adrenaline, I think."

"Right." Cally nodded, standing. "Blake, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you didn't know."

"It isn't your fault," he said, his tone harsher than he’d intended it to be. He gave her an apologetic glance, and Cally went in search of Gan.

Blake turned on Vila. “And I don't want anyone giving him a hard time about this, no matter how tempting. Not even about the fainting. For one thing, it's too personal for jokes, and for another, we might easily lose him over this. We need him, and it's not safe for him if he leaves the _Liberator_ either, no matter what he wants to believe. If he chooses to go as a result of something I’ve done—well, something _else_ I’ve done, that's one thing. But I won't have him forced off out of embarrassment. I mean it, Vila, not a word on this. I'll talk to the others."

"All right," Vila said, a little hurt. "I know not to take a joke too far, Blake. I don't actually want to make Avon miserable, and I wouldn't do that to you. I mean, it's your bond as much as it's his."

"Right. Thanks, Vila. Could you ask Jenna and the others to come have a word with me?"

"All right. And, er, congratulations, I suppose."

Blake just sighed, burying his head in his hands and sitting down hard on the couch as Vila left. Negotiating with Avon was already fraught and loaded, bound up in complicated material considerations and tense interpersonal politics. This was just what he needed—for the room they were negotiating in to be lit on fire.

He wondered why he wasn't more surprised. Avon, of all people. The two of them could barely get through a conversation without arguing. The idea of taking Avon on a conventional date was a little surreal. What the hell had the man even _done_ with his previous romantic partners? But while Blake was worried about the implications, he found _he_ didn't have any urge to faint (thanks a _lot_ , Avon). He'd always found Avon strangely compelling. Common knowledge had it that the mark didn't create affinities between people, merely visually represented them. Blake _liked_ Avon—he had before he'd even known that Avon had a lot of good qualities worth liking him for.

Blake rubbed his neck, and next to him on the couch, Avon jerked uncomfortably, still unconscious.

Blake smiled ruefully at him. "Sorry," he murmured.

***

When Avon woke up in the medbay, he was alone apart from Cally. She explained that no one was going to talk to him about any of it unless he brought the subject up. Blake had made a personal plea, and they'd all agreed. She had to move her hand away from his arm as she said Blake's name. There was apparently a lot of psychic energy attached to it in Avon's mind, and knowing that, via touch, felt like prying.

"Blake says not even he will speak of it—unless you wish to, in your own time."

"How generous of him," Avon sneered.

"Yes, I thought so. Particularly as it concerns him as nearly as it does you," Cally said evenly. "I have already told him, but I _am_ sorry, Avon—I hadn't thought to expose you like that. I presumed you would know."

"Why would we have?"

Cally gave him a look that indicated 'because it was obvious to me', and chose not to say anything further.

"I suppose it is ultimately better, that we should know," Avon said.

"I agree," Cally said. "What did Blake mean—one for sorrow?"

"It's an old rhyme about magpies, the bird on my—our mark. I think people told fortunes, ‘augured’, based on the number they saw."

"And one meant sorrow."

"I have never thought of it that way. It was just a bird on a branch, alone. A tree in winter. I can understand what that might say about me, but it doesn’t make much sense as a representation of Blake. But then—marks are just a matter of biology," he said to himself as much as her. "They needn't really mean anything."

"Well, what are magpies like?"

"Corvids, like ravens and crows. Intelligent. The only Terran non-mammal species capable of recognizing its own reflection." Avon’s expression shifted ambiguously at that. "Blake could probably tell you more. It is the sort of thing he'd know."

"Folklore said they stole shiny objects, trinkets," Blake told Cally when she asked the next day. "Though I think that was eventually proved to be incorrect, and that magpies turned out to be rather cautious about new things. A little paranoid. Married magpies anyway—the courting ones were rather more erratic."

"Magpies _marry?_ "

“Well, they formed committed relationships—sorry. It's a bad human habit, ascribing our behavior to other things."

"An act of empathy, surely," Cally pointed out.

"Or a false equivalence," Blake returned, as Cally made the mug of the tea she liked at the start of morning shift. "Dangerously reductive, Avon might call it. I don't know that there are any magpies left alive, outside the domes. They’re supposed to be extinct, but then the Federation isn't very interested in biological science. Not of that sort, anyway. There was a project, a long time ago, to bring every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays to a continent the country he was from subjected and colonized, long after the playwright's death."

"A fitting tribute," she said with a frown.

"Yes, I always thought so," Blake said dryly. "But the point is, even if most of Europe's wildlife died during the initial period when we actually _needed_ the domes, the Americas, where the birds were brought, are vast. And magpies were clever and tenacious. Large, hearty birds—survivors. Some people think you can't be born with a mark that features something that no longer exists. So I always held out some hope."

She was on the verge of asking for the rest of the rhyme when Avon walked in, looking better-rested and totally expressionless.

"Good morning," Blake said with careful emptiness, pressing a mug of the coffee Avon always wanted first thing towards him. Blake did it casually, to undercut the kindness of the habitual gesture, and began speaking to Avon about yesterday's project as though nothing had happened. Cally couldn't tell whether Avon was grateful or annoyed.

He was always a little vague in the morning. He seemed to need coffee, then tea, and a few hours to pull himself together, to sharpen up his edges and make himself definitive. It was Blake who'd noticed as much. He'd called her attention to it months ago, when he’d told Avon to help him with something and Avon had done as he’d asked without question. Vila had said Avon was unusually disinterested in spoiling for a fight that morning. Not just this morning, Blake had explained.

Cally had since noticed that Blake was careful to save the things Avon would really object to for later in the day, if he could. He seemed to think it was only fair to give Avon the chance to talk him out of things, or simply to yell at him.

Two normal days passed, and no one said anything about the subject in front of Blake or Avon. Though Jenna tried to tell Cally it was hilarious—Cally didn't see it, really—and Gan thought it was sad that they weren't all celebrating something so special. Cally said she didn't feel it was quite appropriate, just now, given that it was not what the people involved wanted. Though her own opinions were actually quite in line with Gan's view.

The right word for more than one magpie sighted in company varied, Orac told her. One might call it a tiding, a gulp, a murder, or a charm.

***

“The Hirans are unique in their high rate of endogamy. Their government databases are extremely efficient and open, designed to facilitate matching. The Hirans' social and governmental systems are based on unity and pair bonds," Orac reported. "They elect representatives in bonded pairs. Thus, reasoning suggests they would be most amenable to negotiating with a similarly bonded pair.”

No one said anything for a moment.

"I know you said not to ever mention it, Blake," Vila said, "but it seems _really_ apropos."

"Thank you, Vila," Blake said, giving the thief his most quelling glare.

"Why not?" Avon said suddenly, pulling out Orac's key.

"I'm sorry?" Blake said, turning towards Avon with a start.

"Very rarely," Avon said. "I mean it, Blake. You want this contact, and it is the safest, sanest idea you've had in some time."

"And you're all right with lying?"

"No one has asked me to lie, so it hardly matters."

"Don't be coy," Blake snapped. "If we show up together, that _will_ probably help them trust us and make our arguments carry more force. But they're also going to assume things about the nature of our relationship. I am asking you, are you all right with that? Is it going to bother you? Can you do it?"

Avon's eyes glinted. "I'm neither homophobic nor incapable."

"Good."

"I don’t recall ever having asked for your approval.”

Blake stamped down on whatever reply he'd been about to make, and asked Zen to set a course, which Jenna laid in.

Personally, Blake thought it sounded difficult and uncomfortable. And like a lie. Even if he and Avon didn’t pretend to be romantically involved (and there was no way Blake was putting them in _that_ unsustainable position), they would have to play-act the committed, stable, mutually-respectful platonic relationship Blake _wished_ they had (assuming, as Blake had to, that something more was out of the question). Blake was drawn to Avon, as a friend and romantically. Judging by his behavior, Avon just about tolerated Blake on a good day. Blake had always held himself a little off from Avon for reasons of self-protection, and to give Avon what he seemed to want—the closest thing possible to a Blake-free lifestyle while they were sharing a ship and work. It would do neither of them much good if Blake slipped from his current mixture of emotional and intellectual attraction (infatuation, really, though he didn’t like to think of it) and unwise, possibly unethical use of Avon as fodder for masturbation into outright unrequited feelings for him.

Discovering their marks hadn’t changed things on that score. If anything, Blake found himself feeling more protective of the other man, and tried to contain it by being more reserved with Avon, respecting his space and his obvious disinterest in even broaching the subject. This was apparently simultaneously the right tack and not good enough, because Avon was pushing outwards, needling him more even than usual, looking for unrelated excuses to confront Blake. It was no good hoping for Avon of all people to decide that this quirk of biology meant Blake might be worth making a friend of. Avon appeared to think the mark half accident, half insult. Blake—who’d never put much stock in romantic predestination himself, and who was too busy hoping to keep Avon on the ship to worry about their thwarted conjoined destinies and his own desire to make Avon like him using his tongue—wasn’t allowing himself to think much about his own reaction. Anyway, what was the point of thinking about it if it didn’t mean anything to Avon? Vila had commented that it was Blake’s mark too, but it _felt_ as though it were just Avon’s.

"Just going to leave that, then?" Avon pressed.

"I'm not interested in fighting with you, Avon,” Blake said. "I have some actual work to do."

Blake headed off the flight deck, and Avon made a nasty expression at the back of his head.

"Don't like being dismissed, do you?" Gan said, his tone lighter than the words had been, and Avon turned his poisonous glare on Gan and stalked out. After Blake.

Gan winced. “I shouldn't have said anything. Rather goes against Blake's injunction to let it lie."

“Don’t take it personally. Avon was looking for a fight,” Vila said.

“He hasn’t had one for days," Jenna observed. "Blake's being kind to him, and he doesn't like it. Kindness is practically pity in his book."

“Oh, but Blake's often kind," Gan said loyally.

"Yes, but Avon _likes_ fighting with him,”Vila said. “So if Blake won't play, it probably looks to Avon like Blake doesn't want to encourage him."

"Why don't they just have sex and see if they like it?”Jenna said wearily. “It's what I'd do."  

"Maybe they're platonic soulmates?" Gan offered fairly. "That can happen."

"I don't know anyone less platonic than Avon," Jenna said, rolling her eyes.

"And Blake is a very passionate person," Cally agreed. “I can't read minds, but I can certainly watch people. I was _convinced_ they knew."

"Perhaps they'll have a relaxing time on a planet full of other soulmates and work it out," Gan said wistfully.

"Yes," Jenna said wryly, "because things always go that well for us, and there's no way those two could mismanage a conversation about feelings."

Gan sighed. "A man can dream, can't he? It'd be so peaceful and pleasant if they were just having lovers' tiffs."

"What if these _are_ Avon's lovers' tiffs?"

Gan gave Vila a reproachful look for venturing this terrifying possibility.

***

The conversation they had when Avon caught up with Blake was quite terse, along the lines of: "Is it going to bother _you?_ " "No, it isn't." "Good." And then Blake walked out on him _again_ , and Avon couldn't follow him a second time.

They didn't talk more about it until they next day, the evening before they reached Hira. Since the discovery, they’d both taken special care to wear high collars that showed not a flash of skin at the neck. As Avon was leaving the flight deck, Blake said "I think they'll receive us better if it doesn't look like we have something to hide."

They were alone. Avon turned back to him. “Oh, is that what it looks like?"

"Loose shirts," Blake suggested, looking away from him, seeming to consider Zen's impartial interface. "I'll have to do it too, of course."

"It's lucky the marks aren’t located anywhere that doesn’t lend itself to display." Avon gave the last word a touch of distaste.

Blake turned to him. "First you're annoyed at the suggestion we're hiding them, now you accuse me of making a spectacle of you. When you know what it is you _do_ want, let me know."

"Because I am sure you will take that information into careful consideration. "

Blake grit his teeth. "I try to. I'm trying to do it now. And you're hardly shy about pointing out when I've come short of the mark." Blake winced at his own choice of words and put a hand to his neck to rub it. Avon's expression flickered as he felt it.

"Sorry," Blake said shortly, dropping his hand. “And perhaps we should try not to argue so much in front of them, either."

Avon's eyes narrowed. “I see. You want me to refrain from contradicting you and come running when you snap your fingers?"

"No, Avon, I just mean we shouldn't do _this_ ," Blake gestured, "in front of the Hirians. It hardly looks like a relationship between a bonded pair."

Avon's expression went a little strange. "We fight all the time."

"I have noticed."

"You haven't objected before."

Blake laughed, surprised. "What do I do _but_ object? Who likes fighting? It's tiring and unproductive and you don't actually get anything out of it—not like you do in a conversation."

"Your entire life is a fight," Avon insisted.

“Well, maybe I don't like my life all that much." Blake rolled his eyes. "I'd hardly be a terrorist if the safer, bloodless path you're always taunting me with was in any way a viable option. I tried with the Freedom Party, and look how well that went.”

"Fine," Avon said suddenly. "I'll try and avoid fighting with you."

"What, just like that? Are you even capable of it?"

"I managed at Space City, didn’t I?"

Blake gave him a less than impressed look. "For ten minutes."

"Your faith in my capabilities is, as always, flattering."

"I have great faith in your capabilities, in your areas of specialization. _This_ isn't one of them."

"Blake studies? No. Apparently not."

Avon left, and Blake wondered if he'd missed something.

***

"Now that we _can_ talk about it," Vila said in the teleport bay to a just-entered Avon, "I'm not shocked, really. I mean you were always daddy's favorite, well before this."

Avon nearly dropped his gun.

"Something I said?" Vila asked innocently. Blake came in, and Vila straightened up.

Blake observed the scene—Avon glaring murder at Vila—and made an intelligent guess. "My request, Vila, which you agreed to honor, is still in effect.”

"All right, all right. No sense of fun on this ship," Vila sighed, teleporting them down.

"You don't need to protect me from _Vila_ ," Avon sneered when they materialized in a glen.

"In the long run, perhaps I'm protecting Vila from you. Let's go and find our contacts, shall we?"

They met their pair of Hirans shortly, and Avon was on best behavior. The Hirans, feeling sufficiently comfortable with them and sure they were who they said they were after an introductory conversation, guided them to the meeting proper. There Blake and Avon, their initial contacts, and two more Hiran couples discussed their worries about what the looming threat of Federation encroachment would mean for the Hiran way of life. The Federation passively suppressed bonding, providing no resources like the Hirans' databases and no special legal protections for mark mates. A whole suite of related issues—the option of cooperative job placement, damage payments for mark-violation, anonymity and protection for when a mark-match went terribly wrong—simply weren't provided for under Federation law.

For the Hirans, who had broken away from Earth centuries ago to found their capital, New Philadelphia, and with it a society constructed around mark-matches and dualistic identity, these weren't minor addendums. This was the core of law. They would never have voluntarily chosen to join the Federation. Unfortunately at some point the planetary government had taken out a substantial loan from the Federation Monetary Fund, and it had come with crippling interest payments attached. The Hirans couldn't possibly pay it off, even if they instituted brutal austerity measures. If they failed to meet their payment targets, they'd have to submit to the authority of a Federation financial czar, installed to regulate their economy and policies for them. This was, by any other name, an inevitable precursor to full incorporation into the Federation’s sphere of influence as a dependent planet. Thus a neutral planet sympathetic to anti-Federation activism stood to lose its independent status and its entire way of life within the year. The Federation would have bought the planet cheaply, having never needed to go to the trouble of conquering it. To Blake, it was a familiar pattern.

Blake made a point of asking for Avon's opinions during the meeting. It was akin to the room the Hirans made for one another in the discussion, and if Avon wasn't going to fight with him, then Blake would have to allow for his dissent in other ways. He needed Avon’s opinion too much to go without it.

Avon asked the precise sum of the debt and was shown some figures. He asked the Hiran economics team whether they agreed that the Vandor Confederacy could shoulder the loan. Vandor had considerable financial resources, and, like the Federation, dealt in interplanetary banking, but they weren't interested in culturally assimilating their client worlds. Blake said he was more in favor of any plan that could actually liquidate the debt, rather than shifting the debt-slavery over to another master. Avon looked like he wanted to say something tart, but instead told Blake that their primary goal, and that of the Hirans themselves, was the preservation of Hiran neutrality. He couldn’t work a miracle and overhaul the totality of interplanetary economics.

 _But––_ he reconsidered––if they could introduce a clerical error into the Federation banking system that made the planet look worthless, this might result in the debt being sold, sub-prime fashion, to the Vandor Confederacy. The key might lie in algorithmic or high-frequency trading. They'd need, essentially, to determine the rules of the game: to figure out what the Federation's pre-programmed trading instructions were likely to be—what sort of failure they’d pick up on—and thus determine what target to hit to fake a collapse. Introduce an error there, make the figures look, just for an instant, as though Hira was valueless, and the Federation computers would automatically sell off the debt, before a human could check it. The very mechanism of the plan meant that they stood to substantially reduce the overall amount of Hira’s debt in the process.

The Hirans looked nervous at the idea of outright _defrauding_ the Federation—wouldn't they come in search of retribution? Blake pointed out that the interest rate the Hirans were paying and the mechanisms of interplanetary capital were frauds in its own right. The Hirans would just be turning the tables. He spoke up in defense of Avon's abilities. If Avon could cause the Hiran computers that reported back to Central Control to introduce a false signal, he could make it look like an accident. A freak outage, a data hiccup. If the Hiran economy suddenly dived and looked totally unviable, the Federation would essentially sell Hira to a foreign power, and then be held accountable to that binding contract. They might not even be legally _able_ to send out an auditing team after the fact.

And if they _did_ send a team out? Well, Avon was good. The auditors would probably think it _had_ been an accident. Hira wasn't so vital to the Federation that they'd feel compelled to scour over what had happened. And even if they did figure it out, the Hirans could plausibly claim to have no knowledge of it and nothing to do with it. Even if someone did manage to trace the crime back to Avon, then it would look like another terrorist action on Blake's people's part. Blake had every reason to keep Hira out of Federation hands, and he wouldn’t have needed their cooperation to do it. It was Blake the Federation would blame, in that event, not the Hirans—and Blake didn't think they could try and kill him any harder than they were doing. Besides, how did the Hirans like the alternatives?

Blake brought them around, and Avon outlined a timescale as dinner was brought in, bending over the table to work out how they'd need to go about testing the Federation's trading instructions to determine their limits. Avon estimated he would need a week to do it. Blake nodded. Two-person teams should fly the Liberator discreetly, keeping her out of sight, moving, and not terribly far from teleport range, in case of emergencies. The people flying her could trade off, to give the others some time to relax on the planet. Cally would like that, Avon observed. She was on another of her 'rest is medically necessary' kicks. Rest _was_ medically necessary, Blake said mildly. Avon said he'd ask when Blake had last slept, but he wasn't arguing this trip. The Hirans laughed, and Blake felt a little discomfited, as though, without trying to trick his hosts, he was pretending to be something he wasn't. (And a little as though Avon had said something intimate to him in front of near strangers.)

Blake bent to look at Avon's work, and one of the Hiran economic advisors said "My, what lovely marks—magpies."

Blake was a little surprised—it wasn't the sort of thing someone from Earth would have commented on. But then the Hirans were totally unembarrassed by marks, so it made sense.

"You recognize the bird?" Blake asked. "I had to research it extensively. They haven’t been sighted on Earth for centuries."

"Oh yes.” The advisor shrugged. "We were settled by colonists from the Americas, originally. We brought examples of our local wildlife for conservation purposes. Have you never seen one in the flesh? We'd be happy to show you where they nest."

"I'd like that," Blake said, a little touched.

"And your mark-mate, of course," the advisor offered.

"Oh," Blake said, slightly taken aback. Avon, sentiment, and nature were utterly incompatible concepts in his mind. "If he likes."

"I'll go, when I'm not busy with this," Avon said, not looking up from his papers. "It is, after all, my mark too. I should like to be able to say I've seen one."

They all ate dinner over the plans, and Blake was a little charmed by how well the Hiran couples got on. The Council Leader and her Co-Leader, without discussion, traded the vegetables they disliked. The two security officers that had met them initially enjoyed a companionable silence. The economics advisors bickered good-naturedly. It was peaceful. Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy such contentment (even if it didn’t always work out—at least _these_ people seemed not to make the hash of it he and Avon did). Blake resolved to ask Avon to get what he could on the Hiran databases, so they could offer the technology to other neutral worlds, where possible. Given that the Federation wouldn’t allow anything like these networks under its jurisdiction, the prospect of access to the databases might make an attractive incentive to oppose them.

“As you see, you needn't have worried," Avon said on the way to their rooms.

"Hm?" Blake asked.

"Mora and Nesh, the finance team—they argue. We wouldn't have looked strange."

"They don't argue, they bicker. It's different."

“How?"

Blake waved a hand absently. "It's fond. You and I are at each other like we're going to war. Come on, Avon, surely I don't need to explain the different valences of arguments to _you_."

"Where are we sleeping?" Avon asked after a silent moment.

“Oh, I told them we needed separate rooms, of course. Don’t worry, we needn’t pretend to get along so far as that. You’re—" Blake scanned the numbers, "here, actually." He pointed. "I'm a few corridors further on."

Avon's eyes narrowed. "Where are you, then, if I need to find you?"

Blake gave him a perplexed look. "You have your bracelet. You can just call, can't you? Goodnight, Avon." Blake walked on, leaving Avon in the hall.

Later, lying in bed, Blake felt his neck prickle and shifted a little uncomfortably. Avon undressing for bed, then—the fabric pulling over his head. It was strange. All his life he'd had the phantom sensations. Everyone did. Or a slight, localized chill, if your partner was dead. (Poor Avon must have had a strange time of it the weeks when Blake had been captured and brainwashed—though cultural taboos prohibited much interference with the marks, even under those conditions.) But these sensations had just been a part of his own body before. Now they were references to Avon. Indications of what Avon was doing. Blake had taken special care since the discovery, whipping tightly-fitted, mark-dampening jackets on and off without coming into contact with his own skin and washing his neck brusquely with a cloth, as quickly as possible. So much as brushing the mark now felt like touching Avon without his permission—Blake wondered if the sudden total absence of regular, casual sensation might feel strange and even disorienting for the other man. Probably not—in all likelihood, Avon welcomed the overdue privacy.

The pressure returned a moment later, like Avon was—digging his nails in. It persisted. It was a little—Blake bit his lip. Shifted. After a moment, he reached over, took his bracelet into his hand, and called.

"Avon," Blake said, keeping his voice as even as possible, "have you hurt yourself? My mark is—throbbing.” The pressure didn't abate.

"No," Avon said, tightly, after a moment. So perhaps he had and didn't want to admit to clumsiness.

"All right," Blake sighed. "Try and take care of yourself, Avon."

To Blake's surprise, Avon laughed.

"What?" Blake asked.

"Nothing," Avon said, something funny about his breathing.

"Fine," Blake said, his voice rough with suppressed irritation. "Don't tell me."

"I thought we agreed that I wouldn't tell you things you didn't want to hear." Avon almost seemed to be prolonging the conversation.

"That _isn't_ what we agreed," Blake said sharply. A sudden twist in his neck made Blake gasp. It was succeeded by a smooth, rolling sensation. Like a hurt area being soothed. That made sense—after something got hurt, what did you do but massage it, to ease the muscles? "That's better," Blake said before he could stop himself.

"Is it?" Avon asked. He cut the connection, and Blake was left with a firm, steady pressure on his neck. Tighter and tighter. Then a light, rolling fluttering. Then a sharp twitch, and the sensation of stretching. Avon had kinks in his back, Blake knew that. He held his spine awkwardly, he was tense. Maybe even psychosomatically bothered by his mark. He'd craned over a conference table all day, and it had been a _long_ day. If he'd asked, Blake could have rubbed his shoulders for him—but Avon would never ask that.

Blake shifted awkwardly. The strange conversation—him in bed with Avon's voice, tense with guarded pain—had left him with a definite urge to masturbate. Which was obviously inappropriate.

After half an hour of trying to look over the finance reports and thinking yes, it was totally inappropriate, Blake decided to do it anyway, carefully not touching his neck in any way. Going to far as to muffle his mark against a pillow. He thought, as he did whenever he allowed himself to do this (mostly he tried not to think about anything at all, when he needed release), about keyed-up, intense sex with Avon.

He didn't like their arguments as a form of discourse. The threat that Avon might leave him was too consistent, real and awful for that, and Avon's agreement on major decisions too vital. But he did appreciate the aesthetics of them, when the threat they represented was at a low enough ebb that he _could_. When the arguments were about small, controllable things that didn't rip him up inside. Blake had always appreciated Avon's capacity for feeling, as demonstrated therein. It had been the first item Blake had put on his early mental list of good qualities that justified how much he liked the other man. It wouldn't do to admit any of this, however. And Blake wanted to stamp out Avon's unfunny, awful suggestions about betraying them all (and Blake especially) unequivocally.

The days passed in hard, close work. Everyone on the _Liberator_ got a holiday but the two of them, Avon pointed out bitterly. Blake agreed, but said nothing rather than let Avon know his complaints were justified. He and Avon were too busy to argue, and they traded off being each other's assistant where necessary. Avon needed everything from Blake’s baseline-competent technical assistance and his planning skills to coffee. Blake needed Avon to back him up in policy discussions, and he needed Avon’s technical expertise.

While top governmental jobs were generally considered two-person, a lot of Hirans in pair bonds had quite separate work. Most Hiran jobs were designed for two people, but a lot of Hirans had long- or short-term work partners separate from their domestic partners. The Hirans seemed to think Blake and Avon’s different but overlapping skillsets were very normal.

They worked so well like this that Blake had to stamp down the treacherous thought that the marks were no accident. The fond delusion was only helped along by the fact that, kicking and screaming all the way, he and Avon often managed to accomplish really incredible things together, and Avon had often obeyed his better impulses and acted to protect Blake. But Blake could credit neither Avon’s competence nor his poorly-hidden morality to himself. Blake likewise had to banish accompanying observations about how pleasant it was to pretend that they were always in accord like this, to the Hirans and to himself. It was, simultaneously, strangely irritating not to have as much of Avon’s attention as he normally did. They were buried in the work, and Avon seemed more than usually distant, as though not being able to argue with Blake had caused him to forget how to even speak to him. Or, Blake supposed, had caused him to lose interest in doing so.

"I have to admit, you've more than managed it," Blake observed on their second-to-last day. They were alone in the facility Avon had been working in all week. Blake had walked in to find Avon seated in a swivel chair, which he had turned towards Blake. "You and I have barely scrapped at all. I suppose we can get along, when we have to.”

He realised Avon was giving him a less than pleased look. “What?"

"We're getting along _less_ well than usual," Avon said. "We're hardly speaking. We’re acting like strangers."

"Surely that’s—better than arguing?" Blake asked, perplexed. “Look at all we’ve managed to do here! If you _don't_ think this is better, why aren't we arguing in private?"

"Because _you_ don't think it is," Avon said shortly. "I misunderstood what you got out of our earlier conversations, and whatever you believe, I have no interest in talking to myself."

"What did you think I got out of them?" Blake asked.

"What I did," Avon answered.

"And what's that?"

"Why do you need me to say it?" Avon asked through clenched teeth.

"Because," Blake said, finding he was suddenly properly _angry_ —having gone from nothing to spoiling for a knock-down, drag-out in moments, as though a week of repression had taken its toll on _him_ , unannounced, "I’d like to know what you get out of terrifying and hurting me.”

Not having been able to argue with Avon about trivialities for a week had apparently pushed Blake to the point where they were going to have a real argument—and now that he’d started it, he couldn’t double back. He found he could hardly stop the words from rolling out of his mouth—as though he were out of practice, and his control had been eaten away by a tension he hadn’t even consciously recognized as such.

“I can't _stand_ you threatening to leave, or take the ship out from under me. Did you _imagine_ that would give me a great deal of pleasure?"

Avon blinked at him. "Do you even pay attention to anything I _do?_ I haven’t seriously considered either option for some time. Instead I've acted against my own interests to help you, repeatedly. If I had ever been invested in either plan, I'd have done something about it by now, believe me.”

"Would you? Or has the timing just been off? You actually left me on XK-72!" Blake could hear his voice going a little plaintive, and was horrified.

"And I came back after an hour's tour, even though I was _furious_ with you for pushing me to seriously consider it, and for not stopping me!” Avon leaned forward, indignant, as if Blake had said something hurtful or insulting, rather than just reported Avon’s own claims back to him. “I made myself pathetic, for you.”

“So I should have tried to _stop_ you? You'd be the first to protest if I challenged your ability to do as you liked. You talk about running all the time." And though he’d managed to veer away from plaintive, Blake could hear and feel that his voice, his body, were tight with anger and controlled vulnerability.

Avon’s face and voice went strangely soft. Deliberate. "We are past that now. I thought you understood as much."

"Even if I believed that, what about the rest?" Blake persisted. "You constantly argue with me about whatever action we're taking, rather than coming to me and discussing it, which is what you would do if you cared about our work more than about telling me and everyone else that I'm not as clever as you are."

Avon got to his feet. " _That_ is ridiculous, Blake. I've spent the past _week_ helping you set up a bank fraud that doesn't benefit me. It has been as much your plan as mine. I've never suggested I don't think you're my intellectual equal, because that's patently not true, and I wouldn't remain with you, under your direction, if it was. And I cannot _believe_ you don't think this conversation is saying more than all the niceties we’ve exchanged over the past week of empty politeness combined.”

“That’s the trouble with arguments.” Blake tried to close it down, pack it away before they did any more damage. “You say things better left unsaid.”

"Oh, but I _don’t_ share your apparent regard for silence on this point.” Avon was speaking quickly now, rushing like a bullet train, impossible to derail—it was all Blake could do to catch and follow his words and the substance of his rapidly-moving discourse. “And now that we're not avoiding the issue, under your orders, you can admit it, Blake. You've been disappointed ever since you realized it was _me_. You haven't even tried to talk to me since we found out—and I didn't think anything could stop you from speaking your mind, not if the issue was something you felt strongly about. _That_ is the trouble, then. This isn’t important to you. You simply care more about—" Avon plucked an issue out of the air, "the quality of food on the _London_ than you do about me. You got yourself beaten over that. Whereas you won't even look _me_ in the eye."

Avon was properly hissing at him now, and had pressed into Blake's space, forcing Blake to look at him, whether he wanted to or not.

"I suppose you thought your soulmate would be someone appropriately high-minded and keen. Someone worthy of you. Well, I am sorry to disillusion you about yourself. I’m afraid it’s only _me._ "

" _I'm_ disappointed?" Blake shouted. "You _fainted from shock!_ How's _that_ for a warm reception?"

"Whereas _you_ didn't even care to tell me where you were staying, in case you needed me. You didn't want me to come with you on so much as a walk. You didn't trust me to even pretend to like your company, and it's easy to see why, because, apparently, you think there is no fondness whatsoever in the way we talk to one another. Oh, I knew I was significantly more invested in you than you were in me. That was bearable, if unpleasant. But I failed to realize you didn't even _like_ me. Embarrassingly enough, I'd rather deluded myself into believing you did.”

"You’re the one who rebuffs any attempt I make to get closer to you, and as much as I could help it, I stopped trying, because it was only embarrassing me and annoying you!"

“We _are_ close,” Avon insisted, as firm on this as Blake had ever seen him on anything. “Whether you like it or not. That, at least, has nothing to do with your opinion of me. You can’t just wish that away, any more than you can the marks themselves.”

“All right, Avon. And you _hate_ it.” Blake laughed, short and sharp and bitter. “You and I are close like people with prison arrangements are in relationships.”

Avon couldn’t answer, and Blake wondered if he’d been terribly right or terribly wrong. “I've _always_ liked you,” Blake said suddenly, realizing that _that_ of all things had been in question. “Since I met you. I wondered if it might have made a difference, if we’d met under other circumstances.”

“I don’t think it would have,” Avon said (now what the _hell_ did that mean?), still looking—

Blake wondered if he’d actually managed to _hurt_ Avon. Not his pride, but _him_. Then he wondered if he hadn’t managed, despite his best efforts, to do it several times since the discovery.

Blake breathed out. This was the trouble with arguments. He wasn’t listening. He and Avon could take a long time to talk through a difference of opinion, and they tended to make their worst mistakes with each other when they were in haste, failing to understand one another. He was missing something—perhaps several somethings. He ran the conversation back over in his mind. Something jagged and important, which he wanted very much to believe he’d understood correctly, caught his attention. “You—mean that?"

"Mean what?"

"That you aren’t—seriously considering going?"

Avon crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh for god's sake Blake—do you need an itemized list of the times I've saved your life?"

"No need. I just wasn't counting them against the threats. I didn’t realize this was doubly-entry book keeping. _God,_ that's a relief."

Blake felt like laughing, and smoothed his face with his hand. Avon looked—both slightly mollified, and still wary. Blake wanted to reach out and touch Avon’s tightly-crossed arms, to unbend him a little. Blake felt the sweet ache of wanting to be kind to Avon, and its impossibility. Kindness to someone who didn’t want it wasn’t even kindness.

"If it's bothering you, then I should say I _do_ appreciate our arguments,” Blake told him, “so long as I don't think you're always weighing whether today's the day you abandon me. _Everything_ changes, if I'm not afraid of that. I’m _free_ to like them, if they’re not about whether you hate me and whether you’re going to do anything irrevocable about it if you do."

"I hoped you knew me better than that," Avon said stiffly.

Blake rolled his eyes. "It's not a matter of not knowing you. I took you at your word because I felt I _had_ to. Because the threat was grave, and you mattered to me—you are _incredibly_ important to me—and I didn't really know how to anticipate your behavior. You're not always easy to figure out."

“False modesty doesn’t suit you. You must have me completely figured out. You manage me easily, all the time," Avon said.

" _Never_ easily, and not without blind spots where my own reactions get in the way."

"That cup of coffee the day after I fainted, and pushing me to talk about work—you kept me from bringing up something you didn't wish to discuss. You made it impossible."

" _That_ was supposed to give you room to think, and _not_ upset you. But, clearly, you _are_ upset. How well do you think I did?" Blake shook his head. "You're too complex a system to manipulate in that direct a fashion. You're worse than these protocols.” Blake nodded at Avon's stack of hard-copy parameter testing read-outs. "And often I only know what you did, not what five motives led you to do it. That’s what I have to deduce from. I can, however, know you by spirit rather than by letter. I'd like to think I do. As well as I've ever known anyone, even if there’s more to you than there is to many people."

"Flattery, Blake?"

"Perhaps it'll get me somewhere.” Blake smiled. Avon’s expression flickered, and Blake caught at another fragment of the argument. “Earlier--did you say _invested_?"

"No."

"Yes, you did. Avon, I—like you. A great deal," Blake told him. "Personally, and—sexually, as it happens. But I thought you were totally uninterested. Was that wrong? You didn’t—act in ways I recognized as interested. Or try and speak to me about this. And you _fainted_."

"I was _surprised_. You may also remember that I masturbated while speaking to you over a com, fingering your mark, because I didn't like the idea of you not paying attention to me. It's rather an obvious hint."

"Did you really?" Blake asked, a little enchanted. "No wonder I had such an urge to do the same after you hung up.” Avon had, in his round-the-houses, very Avon way, been blatant and honest. All Blake could do was be as frank as possible in return. “I wasn't surprised. Or at all disappointed—though I _did_ worry about your reaction, which I presumed would be negative. I wanted—look, I know this is _stupid_ , but I wanted to protect you, as much as possible.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Avon said, his expression softening slightly.

Blake swallowed and continued, looking Avon properly in the eye, like they apparently both wanted. It felt vulnerable and electric. “The fact is, of everyone I've ever met, you're the person who makes the most sense to me in this capacity. I've always been guarded with you because I thought I could be in love with you, given half a chance. And that would make everything even more complicated."

"I am,” Avon said, dropping it with precision.

"I'm sorry?"

“Rarely." Avon smiled. “I am in love with you. I have been since even before I stopped talking seriously about leaving. There is your half a chance, I think."

Blake took a shaky breath. Didn’t move. "Yes. I think that—will do it."

"There is, of course," Avon said, stepping impossible inches closer, "more to it than our acknowledged feelings. I always considered marks a sort of scientific curiosity. I've hardly ever met anyone matched, and I thought you quite different from me. Better. It honestly never occurred to me to hope in that direction. Yet I am your match. And you are mine. We might allow that a certain significance.” Avon‘s voice had dropped to a low purr. “Is that sufficient incentive, Blake?"

"Can I touch you?" Blake asked, voice rough.

Avon grinned at him. "I've been wondering what it would take to get you to."

"Is that a yes?"

"Oh," he laughed, "yes."

***

"How did you get on?" Gan asked warmly.

"We saw magpies, on the last day," Blake said, fairly pleased with the excursion and knowing Gan liked nature. Avon had good-humoredly bitched for the entire excursion, but he'd let Blake wrap a hand around his shoulder as they walked, and it had been surprisingly soothing to properly talk to him again. Squabbling and chattering like birds at a nest. The economic advisors had commented that it was nice that the two of them had finally gotten comfortable enough around the Hirans to let their hair down.

"Three of them—four short of a secret,” Avon said.

"Oh, is this more of that rhyme?" Cally asked, noting that they were standing next to one another looking relaxed––Avon leaning in, slightly, as though drawn to Blake’s gravity. "What do two of them signify?"

Avon looked momentarily cross—embarrassed, Blake knew—and walked out of the teleport area.

"Two is for joy," Blake said, amused. "Three's for a wedding, but I don't think we're quite there yet, omens aside—"

Avon shouted for him from the flight deck, probably alarmed by what Blake was disclosing about folklore.

"Coming," Blake called back.

Avon had always thought of his mark as something desolate. A random aberration, or a commentary on himself, depending on his mood. A bird alone. A single, bare tree. A world in winter. Blake thought of it as a bird coming home in the spring—a bit of life returning to a ravaged world. A tree, though bare of leaves, wrought in gold. Another chance, and a positive sign. Maybe there were magpies. Maybe they could win. Besides, two trees made a forest, and two magpies a joy. A flock, a tiding, a gulp, a murder, or a charm.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by Aralias, first reader elviaprose, who also gave me the Travis idea and pulled the title from King Lear:
> 
> "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,  
> when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit  
> of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our  
> disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as  
> if we were villains by necessity; fools by  
> heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and  
> treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,  
> liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of  
> planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,  
> by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion  
> of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish  
> disposition to the charge of a star! My  
> father compounded with my mother under the  
> dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa  
> major; so that it follows, I am rough and  
> lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,  
> had the maidenliest star in the firmament  
> twinkled on my bastardizing." 
> 
> I hate when people apologize for their terrible, embarrassing fic ideas, so I'm not going to.


End file.
